Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention
was made.
Claim(s) 1-2, and 4 - 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin (US 20230351696 A1) in view of Kim (KR-101591427-B1) and in further view of Tatarchuk (US-20100091018-A1).
Regarding claim 1, Lin teaches A method comprising: determining one or more first geometries associated with one or more portions of a first mesh data structure ( Para 85-86 and 88-91: teaches mesh data containing vertex and face information and dividing the initial two dimensional mesh into a plurality of sub meshes. 89-91 further determine region information vertex coordinates and group triangles corresponding to individual sub meshes) including a plurality of instanced mesh tiles corresponding to one or more first portions of a terrain surface; generating one or more second mesh data structures having one or more second geometries corresponding to the one or more first geometries ( Para 60-63 and 84-85: teaches obtaining two dimensional mesh data from three dimensional mesh data and constructing a hierarchical sub mesh structure from that mesh data. Para 87-93: describe successively dividing the initial mesh into sub meshes and associating/grouping corresponding vertex/triangle geometries and the resulting sub mesh structures); and rendering the terrain surface in a simulation environment using the one or more second mesh data structures at least partially in place of the one or more portions of the first mesh data structure ( Para 149, 153: determine which target level/ sub-meshes are required for rendering based on the amount/portion of the virtual object that needs to be rendered. Para 154-156: then render the selected target sub-meshes. Para 158-166: further teach selecting a second target level for decomposed rendering and rendering using the sub meshes structures rather than rendering the original mesh structures in its entirety).
Kim teaches including a plurality of instanced mesh tiles corresponding to one or more first portions of a terrain surface. the one or more second mesh data structures corresponding to one or more second portions of the terrain surface ( Para 39-40: teaches dividing “the 3d terrain into terrain tiles to construct the terrain mesh data composed of the divided terrain tiles”. Para.40: teaches that each terrain tile comprises polygons and vertex coordinates. Para 42-44 and 48-49: further teach loading/ rendering the terrain mesh tiles at different levels of detail according to the user viewpoint. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Lin’s hierarchical sub mesh rendering technique in view of Kim to include a plurality of instanced mesh tiles corresponding to portions of the terrain surface, in order to facilitate efficient terrain rendering at varying levels of detail based on the user’s viewpoint.)
Tatarchuk teaches the instance mesh concept (Para 31, 34-35 and 39: teaches the use of instance coarse mesh and LOD of 3D objects. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Lin in view of Kim with Tatarchuk to utilize instanced mesh data having selectable levels of detail of efficiently render multiple three dimensional objects while reducing graphics processing requirements).
Regarding claim 2, The method of claim 1, wherein:the plurality of instanced mesh tiles of the first mesh data structure define at least a three-dimensional (3D) topography of the terrain surface in the simulation environment (Kim, para. 39-40, 43, and 48-49:teaches a 3D terrain being divided into terrain tiles , which collectively form terrain mesh data and represent the 3d topography), and the one or more second mesh data structures define at least one or more 3D characteristics associated with one or more features associated with the terrain surface (Kim, Para.68: teaches 3D terrain together with ground facilities and underground objects features associated with the terrain surface, represented in the 3d visualization).
Regarding claim 4, Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk teaches The method of claim 1, wherein:the one or more first portions of the terrain surface correspond to one or more base layers of the terrain surface (Lin, Para 61-63, and 87-93: teaches dividing mesh into sub meshes/ portions and hierarchically organizing those portions into different levels); and the one or more second portions of the terrain surface correspond to one or more hardtop surfaces of the terrain surface to be rendered on top of the one or more base layers ( Kim, Para 8, 37-40 and 68: teaches 3d terrain visualization and that the terrain can include real ground facilities represented together with the terrain/topography. Para 39: constructs the terrain as terrain tiles, while para.68: specifically distinguishes the terrain/topography from the real ground facilities displayed with it. Para 40 and 44-45: teaches rendering the three dimensional terrain mesh and applying imagery to the outer surface of the polygons. While para 68: teaches simultaneously displaying real ground facilities with the DEM terrain/topography).
Regarding claim 5, Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk teaches The method of claim 1, further comprising:determining one or more edges of one or more features to be rendered with respect to the one or more second portions of the terrain surface (Lin, Para 253-275: teaches determining the edges of triangles within a sub mesh and evaluates edge relationships. For example, para 257-267: acquire the edges of each triangle and determine edge sharing relationships. While para 271-273: add connection edges corresponding to the sub mesh/cross section loop), wherein the generating of the one or more second mesh data structures comprises generating one or more polygons of the one or more second mesh data structures based at least on the one or more edges (Lin, Para. 220-223,248, and 292-293: teaches triangle grouping within sub meshes. Para 220: initializes the triangle grouping operation; para 221-223: allocate triangles into grouping sets; and para 248: explains that the triangles of the mesh are put into the grouping process and assigned to the corresponding sub mesh).
Claim(s) 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin (US 20230351696 A1) in view of Kim (KR-101591427-B1) and in further view of Tatarchuk (US-20100091018-A1) and Charbonnet (US-20260204021-A1).
Regarding claim 3, The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining one or more polygons associated with the first mesh data structure ( Lin, Para 85-86, 89-91 and 116-123: teaches mesh data containing vertex and triangle information and determines/groups individual triangles based on their vertex information and their locations within regions of the mesh.);and preventing data corresponding to the one or more polygons to from being included in rendering one or more mesh tiles of the plurality of instanced mesh tiles (Lin, Para 123, 149-156: teaches selective rendering of portions/ sub meshes. Para.123 explains that after determining which triangles belong to particular sub meshes, data corresponding to those sub meshes can be directly rendered. Para 149-156: further determine which target sub meshes are to be rendered and render those selected sub meshes),wherein the one or more portions of the first mesh data structure correspond to the one or more polygons (Lin, Para 58: teaches a mesh as including vertices/faces, with the faces formed triangles, and describes sub meshes as portions of a mesh).
Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk fail to teach polygons that are located within a threshold distance of one or more locations associated with one or more features to be rendered in the simulation environment.
Charbonnet teaches polygons that are located within a threshold distance of one or more locations associated with one or more features to be rendered in the simulation environment (Para 21,28,37: teaches determining polygons of a mesh based on a distance threshold, including selecting a polygon when the location of the pixel to be rendered is within a distance threshold of the polygon. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further modify Lin in view of Kim and Tatarchuk to incorporate the distance-threshold-based polygon selection of Charbonnet, in order to efficiently identify and render relevant mesh polygons based on their proximity to features or locations to be rendered. ).
Claim(s) 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin (US 20230351696 A1) in view of Kim (KR-101591427-B1) and in further view of Tatarchuk (US-20100091018-A1) and Zhang (US-20260004527-A1).
Regarding claim 6, Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk teaches The method of claim 1, further comprising one or more second portions of the first mesh data structure and the one or more second mesh data structures ( Lin, Para 204-216, 248, 276 and 287: teaches recursively divides the mesh into hierarchical sub-meshes and the determines cross-section loops for the sub meshes.)based at least on the one or more second geometries corresponding to the one or more first geometries (Lin, Para 253-275: teaches determining shared edges/connection edges between triangles and uses those corresponding geometric relationships to establish connections and cross section loops within the sub mesh), wherein the rendering of the terrain surface is based at least on the merging.
Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk fail to explicitly teach merging of the first and second mesh structure. Zhang Teaches the merging concept (Abstract and para. 6: teaches obtaining a 3d mesh model and merging pairs of first type polygons into second type polygons to obtain a candidate mesh models. The reference further states that each pair of first type polygons has a shared edge in the 3d mesh model. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further modify Lin in view of Kim and Tatarchuk to incorporate the mesh merging technique of Zhang, in order to simplify the mesh structure by combining adjacent polygons and thereby reduce mesh complexity and improve rendering efficiency ).
Claim(s) 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin (US 20230351696 A1) in view of Kim (KR-101591427-B1) and in further view of Tatarchuk (US-20100091018-A1) and Benthin (US-20260004507-A1).
Regarding claim 7, Lin in view of Kim and in further view of Tatarchuk The method of claim 1, but fails to teach wherein the one or more second mesh data structures are associated with one or more different types of topology than the plurality of instanced mesh tiles.
Benthin teaches wherein the one or more second mesh data structures are associated with one or more different types of topology than the plurality of instanced mesh tiles ( Para.44: teaches mesh geometry having different subdivision types/ topologies, including loop, grid and catmull-clark subdivision associated with a curved surface topology. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further modify Lin in view of Kim and Tatarchuk to the different mesh topology types taught by Benthin, in order to provide flexibility in representing and rendering surfaces having different geometric characteristics).
Claim(s) 18- 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin (US 20230351696 A1) in view of Loseille (US-20230410428-A1) and in further view of Kim (KR-101591427-B1) and Tatarchuk (US-20100091018-A1).
Regarding claim 18, Lin teaches One or more processors comprising:processing circuitry to generate one or more mesh data structures to representative of a surface in a virtual environment ( Para 73-81: teaches processors. Para 87-92 and 196-218: teaches constructing a hierarchical sub-mesh structure having multiple levels of sub meshes. Para 206-218: teaches recursively diving sub meshes to construct the hierarchical mesh structure), the one or more mesh data structures including one or more polygons ( Para 55-60 and 85 -90: describes meshes comprising faces/ triangles) .
Lin Fails to teach replace one or more portions of one or more instanced mesh tiles and further fails to teach having one or more sizes based at least on one or more levels of detail associated with the one or more instanced mesh tiles.
Loseille teaches the concept of replacing one or more mesh portions ( para 27: the AMR module performs adaptive mesh refinement on portions of the mesh, generates a new mesh 440, and the solver : swaps the old mesh 430 for the new mesh 440. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Lin in view of Loseille to replace portions of a mesh with newly generated mesh portions to provide adaptive mesh refinement and improve accuracy and efficiency of mesh processing.).
Kim teaches one or more instanced mesh tiles and further teaches to teach having one or more sizes based at least on one or more levels of detail associated with the one or more instanced mesh tiles (para 39-40: teaches dividing 3d terrain into terrain tiles and constructing terrain mesh data from the divided tiles with each terrain tile containing a plurality of polygons. Para 39 -40 and 49-52: associate LOD values with the tiled terrain mesh. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Lin in view of Loseille with Kim to divide mesh data into tiles having different levels of detail to provide efficient rendering at an appropriate resolution while reducing processing load.).
Tatarchuk teaches the instance mesh concept (Para 31, 34-35 and 39: teaches the use of instance coarse mesh and LOD of 3D objects. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Lin in view of Loseille and Kim with Tatarchuk to utilize instanced mesh data having selectable levels of detail of efficiently render multiple three dimensional objects while reducing graphics processing requirements).
Regarding claim 19, Lin in view of Loseille and in further view of Kim and Tatarchuk teaches The one or more processors of claim 18, the processing circuitry further to render the surface in the virtual environment using a combination of the one or more mesh data structures and one or more second portions of the one or more instanced mesh tiles (Lin, Para 149-168: teaches selects and renders sub meshes of a virtual object. Para 154 renders at least one target sub mesh; 157-166 describe decomposed rendering in which selected sub meshes are rendered, including rendering different portions/sub meshes of the virtual object. Para 168: applies the technique to a game scene or virtual reality scene.).
Regarding claim 20, Lin in view of Loseille and in further view of Kim and Tatarchuk teaches The one or more processors of claim 18, wherein the one or more processors are comprised in at least one of:a control system for an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine;a perception system for an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine;a system for performing one or more simulation operations;a system for performing one or more digital twin operations;a system for performing light transport simulation;a system for performing collaborative content creation for 3D assets;a system for performing one or more deep learning operations;a system implemented using an edge device;a system implemented using a robot;a system for performing one or more generative AI operations;a system for performing operations using a large language model; a system for performing operations using one or more vision language models (VLMs);a system for performing operations using one or more multi-modal language models; a system for performing one or more conversational AI operations;a system for generating synthetic data; a system for presenting at least one of virtual reality content, augmented reality content, or mixed reality content; a system incorporating one or more virtual machines (VMs);a system implemented at least partially in a data center; a system implemented at least partially using cloud computing resources; systems using or deploying one or more inference microservices; or systems that incorporate one or more machine learning models deployed in a service or microservice along with an OS-level virtualization package (Lin, Para 168: teaches that the disclosed data processing method may be applied to a game scene or a virtual reality scene, and describes rendering the virtual object within that scene).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 8 and its dependents 9-17 is objected to as allowable subject matter. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: None of the prior art teaches such limitations “One or more first mesh data structures to replace one or more first portions of one or more instanced mesh tiles of one or more second mesh data structures that are obscured from a position in the virtual environment corresponding to a rendered viewpoint; merge, as a combination of mesh data structures, the one or more first mesh data structures and one or more second portions of the one or more instanced mesh tiles of the one or more second mesh data structures that are visible from the position corresponding to the rendered viewpoint.”.
The closest prior art found was EL sana et al (J. El-Sana, N. Sokolovsky and C. T. Silva, "Integrating occlusion culling with view-dependent rendering," Proceedings Visualization, 2001. VIS '01., San Diego, CA, USA, 2001, pp. 371-575, doi: 10.1109/VISUAL.2001.964534. (Year: 2001)). Discloses view dependent mesh rendering in which visible and occluded regions are identified relative to a viewpoint and rendered at different levels of detail; However, El-Sana fails to teach generating first mesh data structures to replace obscured portions of instanced mesh tiles, merging the first mesh data structures with visible portions of the instanced mesh tiles as a combination of mesh data structures, and rendering a texture elevation mesh using the resulting combination).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Lucas Figueiredo, Paulo Ivson, Waldemar Celes,Unsupervised method for identifying shape instances on 3D CAD models,Computers & Graphics,Volume 116,2023,Pages 228-238,ISSN 0097-8493,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2023.08.018. (Year: 2023): discloses the concept of instancing and reusable mesh for operations.
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/LATRELL ANTHONY CREARY/Examiner, Art Unit 2613
/XIAO M WU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2613
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