Chapter 29. Efficient Occlusion Culling

Dean Sekulic Croteam

What Is Occlusion Culling?

Most graphics algorithms show us how to render something quickly, or how to make it look nice. Some techniques favor performance, while others aim for quality, but the challenge is how to strike a balance between the two.

Occlusion culling increases rendering performance simply by not rendering geometry that is outside the view frustum or hidden by objects closer to the camera. Two common types of occlusion culling are occlusion query and early-z rejection.

This chapter examines the occlusion query and how to use it properly, including two examples proving how efficient occlusion culling can be. Because one of the examples relies heavily on the usage of bounding ...

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