Fast Rendering of Sky Color and Atmospheric Scattering Using Graphics Hardware

Abstract

Realistic rendering methods of natural phenomena in real-time have a variety of applications, such as flight simulators or computer games. The scattering effect due to atmospheric particles is one of the most important elements in creating realistic outdoor images. Shafts of light are caused by objects which shut out the sunlight, such as clouds and mountains. This paper proposes a method for creating outdoor images including the sky color and shafts of light. In our method, shafts of light are displayed by subtracting the intensity of the shielded light. Our method is accelerated by using a fragment shader, which is a function of the latest graphics hardware.