US 6,983,283 B2
Managing scene graph memory using data staging
Henry Sowizral, Bellevue, Wash. (US); Karel Zikan, Seattle, Wash. (US); and Randall Keller, San Carlos, Calif. (US)
Assigned to Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. (US)
Filed on Oct. 03, 2001, as Appl. No. 9/970,080.
Prior Publication US 2003/0065668 A1, Apr. 03, 2003
Int. Cl. G06F 17/30 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 707—102 23 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for managing a scene graph, the method comprising:
determining a current location for a viewpoint;
determining a current locality threshold based on at least the current location of the viewpoint;
determining which portions of the scene graph are relevant to the current locality threshold;
loading into a local memory those portions of the scene graph that are relevant within the current locality threshold;
replacing portions of the scene graph that are not relevant within the current locality threshold with one or more pointers, wherein the pointers indicate where the replaced portions may be loaded from if the replaced portions are needed;
determining a predicted future locality threshold; and
loading into the local memory those portions of the scene graph that are relevant within the predicted future locality threshold, wherein said replacing is performed only on portions of the scene graph that are not relevant within (i) the current locality threshold and (ii) the predicted future locality threshold.