Real-time visualization of 3D scenes is a very important feature of many computer graphics solutions. In applications such as computer-aided design, scientific visualization or even in the growing computer games market, the performance of visualization becomes essential. In addition, the complexity of the scenes is increasing and they now contain objects composed of thousands or even millions of polygons. Moreover, emergence of new standards and new supported functionalities in web or mobile environments enable us to efficiently render complex 3D scenes. However, in these environments GPU capabilities are partially supported. Therefore, it is necessary to resort to different techniques that allow us to maintain the quality and performance of 3D applications by managing that huge amount of geometry in such environments. Among the different solutions, many authors have concentrated on level-of-detail approaches. The main objective of this paper is to introduce studies on this topic, presenting the different solutions that currently exist in the field of real-time visualization of level-of-detail models that fits in GPU limited environments such as web or mobile platforms.