Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
In the field of physically-based rendering of natural phenomena, rendering of atmospheric light scattering takes a very important place. Real-time rendering of the sky and planetary atmospheres in general is essential for all outdoor computer games, various simulators, virtual worlds and even for animated movies. In our work we present an accurate and fast method for real-time rendering of parametrizable planetary atmospheres. This is achieved by precomputing the complex volumetric scattering equations into a set of compact lookup tables. The correct atmospheric colour values are then fetched from these in a fragment shader during rendering. The method is capable of rendering planetary atmospheres on today's graphics hardware at the speed of hundreds of frames per second.
Here we present a sample video (.wmv) demonstrating our real-time atmosphere viewer.
