Optimized View Frustum Culling Algorithms

This paper presents new techniques for fast view frustum culling. View frustum cullers (VFCs) are typically used in virtual reality software, walkthrough algorithms, scene graph APIs or other 3D graphics applications. First we develop a fast basic VFC algorithm. Then we suggest and evaluate four further optimizations, which are independent of each other and works for all kinds of VFC algorithms that test the bounding volumes (BVs) against the planes of the view frustum. Results when optimizing specifically for axis aligned bounding boxes (AABBs), oriented bounding boxes (OBBs), bounding spheres and different kinds of navigation are delivered. In particular, we provide solutions which give average speed ups of 3-10 times for AABBS and OBBs depending on the circumstances, compared to the conventional AABB algorithm used for instance in DirectModel [DirectModel], and speed ups of 1.2-1.4 for bounding spheres, compared to Silicon Graphics’ implementation in Cosmo3D [Cosmo3D] and Performer [Performer].