On the number of views of translates of a cube and related problems. (Q1428117)

Given a three-dimensional scene consisting of several opaque polyhedra, a \textit{perspective view} from a point \(p\) is the perspective projection of the scene on a plane as seen from \(p\). When \(p\) lies on the sphere at infinity the term \textit{orthographic view} is used. Two views are considered to be combinatorially (or ``topologically'') different when the set of visible vertices, edges and faces is not the same. If the total number of edges in the polyhedra is \(n\), it is known that the scene has at most \(O(n^6)\) combinatorially different orthographic views and \(O(n^9)\) combinatorially different perspective views. In this paper it is shown that for the special case a scene consisting of \(n\) translates of a cube the bounds improve to \(O(n^{4+\epsilon})\) and \(O(n^{6+\epsilon})\), respectively, and that these bounds are nearly tight. It is also shown how to extend the improved bounds to other related collections of scenes.