Methods, systems, devices and computer program products operable in a computer graphics system include constructing a hierarchical ray tracing acceleration data structure comprising a tree structure, the nodes of which are generated utilizing a bounding interval hierarchy based on defining an axis-aligned scene bounding box and two parallel planes to partition a set of objects in a sense into left objects and right objects, and matching split planes to object bounding boxes. The two planes are perpendicular to a selected one of x, y, or z-axes. Given a splitting plane, each object in an image is classified either left or right based on a left/right selection criterion, and two splitting plane values of the child modes are determined by the maximum and minimum coordinate of the left and right objects, respectively.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application for patent claims the priority benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/793,063, filed Apr. 19, 2006 (expired), and is a Continuation-In-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/474,517, filed Jun. 23, 2006 , entitled "Real-Time Precision Ray Tracing") (pending).
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/474,517 claims the priority benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/693,231, filed Jun. 23, 2005 (expired), and is in turn a Continuation-In-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/299,574, filed Nov. 19, 2002 (issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,184,042).
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/299,574 is in turn a Continuation-In-Part of U.S. Ser. No. 09/884,861, filed Jun. 19, 2001 (issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,227,547), which claims the priority benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/265,934, filed Feb. 1,2001, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/212,286, filed Jun. 19, 2000 (both expired). Each of these noted patent applications, including the provisional and non-provisional applications, is incorporated by reference herein as if set forth in its entirety.
