Methods and systems to determine conservative view cell occlusion

A computer program product including a computer readable medium having computer program logic stored therein, the computer program product logic including:

• image projection logic to cause a processor to project objects of a 3-dimensional graphics environment to a 2-dimensional image plane relative to a view point of a view cell;
• image reduction logic to cause the processor to reduce sizes of object images projected to the 2-dimensional image plane;
• occluder map logic to cause the processor to generate an occluder map from the reduced-size object images;
• comparison logic to cause the processor to compare the object images of at least a portion of the objects to the occluder map;
• and
• identification logic to cause the processor to identify an object as occluded with respect to the view cell when substantially all pixel depth values of the object image are greater than corresponding pixel depth values of the occluder map.

A system, comprising:

• a computer server system to interface between a plurality of user-computers and a 3-dimensional graphics, interactive, walk-through environment, through a corresponding plurality of graphics pipelines;
• and
• a computer program product including a computer readable medium having computer program logic stored therein to cause the computer server system to perform functions in response thereto, the computer program logic including;
• image projection logic to cause the computer server system to project images of objects of the 3-dimensional graphics environment to a 2-dimensional image plane relative to a view point of a view cell,
• image reduction logic to cause the computer server system to reduce sizes of object images projected to the 2-dimensional image plane,
• occluder map logic to cause the computer server system to generate an occluder map from the reduced-size object images,
• comparison logic to cause the computer server system to compare at least a portion of the object images to the occluder map, and
• identification logic to cause the computer server system to identify an object as occluded with respect to the view cell when substantially all pixel depth values of the object image are greater than corresponding pixel depth values of the occluder map.