Distributed rendering and display system

A rendering system comprises a host device disposed in communication with one or more rendering pipelines. Each rendering pipeline comprises a rendering device and a display device. Each display device enables one or more users to view a scene rendered on the host device. Each rendering pipeline provides the user with independent control of their perspective of the scene. The host device receives a CG camera definition from each rendering pipeline and uses it to perform geometry culling and creates a z-buffer for each rendering pipeline. For each rendering pipeline, the rendering device receives a z-buffer and renders a frame buffer for the display device. This architecture reduces the rendering power requirements of the rendering device for each rendering pipeline as compared to performing all rendering on the rendering device, and is particularly useful when multiple users are viewing a complex scene such as a high fidelity simulation environment.