This is a question about 3D programming in general, but I’m learning OpenGL if that makes the answer any different. What I wonder is if all of the work in displaying a image always has to start from scratch for each new frame, or if there’s some way to save intermediate data that could be reused when rendering the next frame, instead of having to be recomputed? Let’s say you’re standing right next to a mountain, then the stuff on the other side of the mountain are occluded by the mountain, there could be a lot of stuff on the other side of the mountain that simply doesn’t have to be rendered because it can’t be seen. Now assume that your character can’t walk particularly fast, then there’s no way that the stuff on the other side of the mountain could be visible already in the next frame, or maybe not even the next 100 frames. Is it possible to avoid having to do the same occlusion check in each frame?
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The problem you’re referring to is called “hidden surface removal” and “occlusion culling”.
In realtime graphics it’s usual to rerender each frame from scratch. However every good renderer will omit all the things that are definitively not visible. There are various algorithms for this.