Glossary

A reference guide for terrain rendering and graphics programming terminology used in the Hello Terrain documentation.

Clipmap(clipmaps, geometry clipmap): A terrain rendering technique using nested, camera-centered grids at different resolutions for efficient large-scale terrain display.
Frustum Culling(frustum culling, FC): An optimization technique that excludes objects outside the camera's view frustum from rendering.
GPU: Graphics Processing Unit - specialized hardware designed for parallel processing of graphics and compute workloads.
Heightmap(height map, heightmaps): A grayscale image where pixel brightness represents elevation data, used to generate terrain geometry.
LOD(Level of Detail): Level of Detail - A technique that reduces the complexity of 3D models as they move away from the viewer, improving rendering performance.
Mesh(meshes): A collection of vertices, edges, and faces that define the shape of a 3D object.
Normal Map(normal maps, normal mapping): A texture that stores surface direction information per-pixel, enabling detailed lighting without additional geometry.
Occlusion Culling(occlusion culling, OC): A rendering optimization that skips drawing objects hidden behind other geometry.
Procedural Generation(procedurally, procedural): Creating content algorithmically rather than manually, often using mathematical functions like noise to generate terrain, textures, or other data.
Quadtree: A tree data structure where each node has exactly four children, used to efficiently partition 2D space for terrain LOD management.
Shader(shaders): A program that runs on the GPU to control how vertices are transformed and pixels are colored.
Terrain Skirt(skirt, skirts): Vertical geometry added to terrain tile edges to hide gaps between tiles at different LOD levels.
Tile(tiles, terrain tile, terrain tiles): A discrete section of terrain geometry, typically square, that can be loaded, rendered, and managed independently.
Vertex(vertices): A point in 3D space that defines the corners of polygons in a mesh.
WebGPU(webgpu): A modern web graphics API that provides low-level access to GPU capabilities for high-performance rendering and compute.