A terrain rending method with GPU-based error metric

We present a terrain rending technique for large, textured terrain, which uses GPU-based error metric. In preprocess, the domain was first tiled and computed into a nested geometric space error map based on geographic theory. In order to obtain seamless connection, the edge errors of two connecting tiles are consistent with each other. At run time, screen space error is projected from geometric error and compared with error threshold according to viewpoint to select terrain grid points by GPU. At last, triangle strip is constructed according to RQT method. The method processes the error metric and triangulation by GPU to improve the rending efficiency of image hardware, and save the running time of CPU.