Terrain rendering technology based on vertex texture

According to the Vertex Texture Fetch technology in Shader Model 3.0, we designed a terrain rendering algorithm based on vertex texture. The algorithm storages the data of terrain as vertex texture, and get elevation value through the vertex shaders. During rendering phase a group of nested grids are built centeredly around current viewpoint. Elevation values are sampled from the vertex texture according to two-dimensional coordinates of the grids. Then the whole data are sent to GPU for rendering. The algorithm can reduce the CPU load and make full use of the powerful float computing and programmability feature.