Why am I getting “splattery” effects in my picture (related to Z-buffering)?
The general idea is this. You may have 24 or possibly 32 bits of depth buffer. Whatever depth buffer precision you have is mapped to the entire distance between the near plane and the far plane. The further apart the near plane and the far plane, the larger “chunk” of space each unit of depth buffer corresponds to. It’s a good idea to keep these “chunks” as small as possible. (To this end, the Open Inventor viewers by default automatically and dynamically adjust the clip planes to fit the scene as tightly as possible.) At any rate, the problem with depth buffer resolution is one of the classic problems of 3D computer graphics and there is no perfect solution. Here are some ways to work with the problem.
