LibSCM renders high-res spherical images. Specifically, LibSCM is a C++ class library that provides a heterogeneous data representation and rendering engine for the interactive display of spherical data sets at scales of hundreds of gigapixels and beyond. Applications include panoramic image display and planetary rendering. The SCM data representation enables out-of-core data access at real-time rates. The spherical geometry tessellator supports displacement mapping and enables the display of planetary terrain data of arbitrary resolution.

As an example, here is a screenshot of a interactive rendering of the Moon synthesized from 8 gigapixels of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter terrain data, textured using another 8 gigapixels of LRO surface imagery.

The structure of a running SCM renderer is as shown in this image. An application generally instantiates a single scm_system object, and that object manages the rest of the structure.

Here, a box reperesents an object and a stack of boxes reperesents a collection of objects. A solid arrow is a strong (owning) reference, and a dotted arrow is a weak (non-owning) reference.

Most fundamentally, an scm_system maintains a collection of scm_file objects, each of which provides access to an SCM TIFF image file. The scm_system also maintains a collection of scm_cache files that maintain the OpenGL texture state needed to render these images. There is exactly one scm_cache for each image format, e.g. 8-bit RGB or 16-bit mono. Each scm_file carries a weak reference to the scm_cache that handles its data.
The scm_system also maintains a collection of scm_scene objects which allow visualizations to be defined. Each scm_scene consists of a GLSL shader plus a collection of scm_image objects that feed it, where an scm_image associates an scm_file with normalization parameters and GLSL shader binding information. An scm_scene also includes an scm_label object that represents textual annotations and map icons.
The scm_system's collection of scm_step objects defines a list of points of interest in the defined set of scenes. Each scm_step includes a foreground scene reference, a background scene reference, and a camera configuration giving an interesting view upon these scenes. This sequence of steps allows an application to provide a tour of the scm_scene definitions.
Finally, the scm_system contains two functional objects. First, the scm_render object manages the production of SCM renderings with dissolve transitions and motion blur, with the help of one or more scm_frame off-screen render targents. Second, the scm_sphere object which manages the adaptive generation of the spherical geometry to which SCM image data is applied.

The scm_cache, scm_image, and scm_scene objects each maintain a weak reference to the scm_system that created them. By this reference they access system state, most notably scm_file data.