Field of View >= 180 deg?

@mgulde wrote:

Dear all,

I am currently working on a project to compute radiative energy transfer across complex geometries. In order to do so between any two objects, one needs to compute the view factor between those objects or - in other words - the amount of surface of one object as seen from the other object.

Traditionally, a lot of this is performed via ray tracing methods. For performance reasons, I would like to use the OcclusionQuery function offered by Monogame / XNA. This function returns the number of pixels which passed the z test after a draw call. To compute the surface area of Object2 visible to Object1, for example, I would perform the following steps:

• Place the camera at Object1, facing Object2
• Draw the complete scene (every single object in the scene has a specific color)
• Perform an OcclusionQuery and redraw Object2
• The number of pixels returned from the OcclusionQuery can now be computed into the visible surface area (in orthographic projection)

sat01.jpg800x844 119 KB

This works pretty well as long as the objects in question are far apart and only span a small angle. For point-source type illumination, e.g., by the sun, this approach hence works fine.

Now, I would like to compute the radiative energy transfer between objects a lot closer to each other, e.g., between individual components inside a satellite. So, again, I would like to find the view factors / visible surface areas of all the surrounding objects. Since in this case, those objects can span a larger viewing angle, things are getting a bit trickier.

One possible way would be to look into many different directions from each radiating point. If assuming a field of view of pi/2, that would mean 8 different perspectives.

It would be way easier, however, to simply use two FoVs which span pi or a single one spanning 2pi (or 4 pi sr, if you like). As soon as I get close to a FoV of pi, Monogame is seemingly getting in trouble and stops drawing things at all. I assume this has to do with the planar image plane of Monogame and is hence a limitation of the algorithm?
Would you have any ideas on how to solve this problem? E.g., rendering to a spherical image plane or sth.?

Thanks!
Max

Posts: 3

Participants: 2

Read full topic