A technical solution is provided for graphical representation of road segments by employing hardware tessellation, wherein cartographic data that describe at least one two-dimensional or three-dimensional road contour of the road segment are assigned to each road segment. One method aspect comprises the steps of piecewise partitioning the parametrization of the road segment into mutually independent curve segments, of providing at least one tessellation factor for each curve segment, the at least one tessellation factor specifying into how many subsegments each curve segment is to be subdivided in the direction of the road contour, of generating a tessellation pattern for each curve segment based on the at least one tessellation factor, and of generating primitives, capable of being represented on a screen, on the basis of the generated tessellation pattern and on the basis of the parametrized road contour.