An Optimal Algorithm for Computing Visibility in the Plane

  • Authors:
  • Paul J. Heffernan;Joseph S. B. Mitchell

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • SIAM Journal on Computing
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

The authors give an algorithm to compute the visibility polygon from a point among a set of $h$ pairwise-disjoint polygonal obstacles with a total of $n$ vertices. Our algorithm uses $O(n)$ space and runs in optimal time $\Theta(n+h\log h)$, improving the previous upper bound of $O(n\log n)$. A direct consequence of the algorithm is an $O(n+h\log h)$ time algorithm for computing the convex hull of $h$ disjoint simple polygons.