Frustum Culling
Frustum culling is a computer graphics optimization technique used to improve rendering performance by excluding objects that lie outside the camera's view frustum from the rendering pipeline. It involves calculating which objects are visible within the camera's field of view and discarding those that are not, reducing the number of draw calls and computational overhead. This is essential in real-time applications like video games and simulations to maintain high frame rates.
Developers should learn frustum culling when working on 3D graphics applications, especially in game development, virtual reality, or any real-time rendering system where performance is critical. It's used to optimize rendering by avoiding processing of off-screen objects, which can significantly improve frame rates and reduce GPU load in scenes with many objects. For example, in open-world games, it prevents rendering distant terrain or buildings that the player cannot see.