An efficient architecture for automatic shaders management on virtual globes

Abstract

This paper presents the last advances in Glob3 Mobile, a multi-platform graphics engine for Virtual Globes oriented to any kind of user. More specifically, the document focuses on the possibilities that programmable graphic pipelines have to offer regarding the rendering of many kinds of geospatial symbology. This paper explains a few key aspects about what shading programs are, and their benefits compared to the fixed rendering pipeline paradigm. It is also discussed how to manage the programs running on GPU in an user-friendly way, and the architecture that allows to perform this management keeping a high performance during the rendering.