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3dfx Interactive
3dfx Interactive, Inc. was an American computer hardware company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics, 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the mid 1990s to 2000. The company's original product was the Voodoo Graphics, an add-in card that implemented hardware acceleration of 3D graphics. The hardware accelerated only 3D rendering, relying on the PC's current video card for 2D support. Despite this limitation, the Voodoo Graphics product and its follow-up, Voodoo2, were popular. It became standard for 3D games to offer support for the company's Glide API. Renewed interest in 3D gaming led to the success of the company's products and by the second half of the 1990s products combining a 2D output with 3D performance were appearing. This was accelerated by the introduction of Microsoft's Direct3D, which provided a single high-performance API that could be impl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
California Secretary Of State
The secretary of state of California is the chief clerk of the U.S. state of California, overseeing a department of 500 people. The Secretary of state (U.S. state government), secretary of state is elected for four year terms, like the state's other List of California state constitutional offices, constitutional officers; the officeholder is restricted by term limits to two terms. The current secretary of state is Shirley Weber, who assumed the role in 2021 after Alex Padilla's appointment to the US Senate. Duties Elections The secretary of state is California's chief elections officer, overseeing all federal and state elections in the state and maintaining a database of registered voters. The officeholder is also responsible for disclosure of campaign and lobbyist financial information, under the California Political Reform Act of 1974. Corporations The Office of the Secretary of State has a number of responsibilities related to corporations; the largest portion office is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igromania
''Igromania'' (, Russian for "Game Mania") is a Russian video game website and formerly a magazine. The magazine was published in Moscow and distributed in Russia and the CIS countries. It was founded in September 1997. The circulation in June 2009 was 190,000 copies (the largest in Europe). Each issue contained 208 pages. The magazine was accompanied by a poster, four stickers, and two DVDs. In its early years, ''Igromania'' focused mainly on solutions and guides to video games, gradually enlarging the variety of content topics and finally moving solutions and guides to the accompanying CD and later DVD. Igromania operates a popular website and a network of YouTube and Twitch channels. From 2019, Igromania ceased printed publications and continued as an online media. History The first issue of ''Igromania'' came out in September 1997. The magazine was founded by Evgeny Isupov and Alexander Parchuk who were both originally engaged in publishing books in Best Computer Games ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CAD/CAM
CAD/CAM refers to the integration of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. ''CAD'' software helps designers and draftsmen; ''CAM'' "reduces manpower costs" in the manufacturing process. Overview Both ''CAD'' and ''CAM'' are computer-intensive. Although, in 1981, Computervision was #1 and IBM was #2, IBM had a major advantage: its systems could accommodate "eight to 20" users at a time, whereas most competitors only had enough power to accommodate "four to six." ''CAD/CAM'' was described by ''The New York Times'' as a "computerized design and manufacturing process" that made its debut "when Computervision pioneered it in the 1970's." Other 1980s major players in ''CAD/CAM'' included General Electric and Parametric Technology Corporation; the latter subsequently acquired Computervision, which had been acquired by Prime Computer. CAD/CAM originated in the 1960s; an IBM 360/44 was used to build via ''CNC'' th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve Hardware acceleration, hardware-accelerated Rendering (computer graphics), rendering. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) began developing OpenGL in 1991 and released it on June 30, 1992. It is used for a variety of applications, including computer-aided design (CAD), video games, scientific visualization, virtual reality, and Flight simulator, flight simulation. Since 2006, OpenGL has been managed by the Non-profit organization, non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. Design The OpenGL specification describes an abstract application programming interface, application programming interface (API) for drawing 2D and 3D graphics. It is designed to be implemented mostly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name ''DirectX'' was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs (the ''X'' standing in for the particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a Video game console, gaming console, the ''X'' was used as the basis of the name Xbox (console), Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The ''X'' initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as DirectInput, XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite. Direct3D (the 3D graphics A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic News
''Electronic News'' was a publication that covered the electronics industry, from semiconductor equipment and materials to military/aerospace electronics to supercomputers. It was originally a weekly trade newspaper, which covered all aspects of the electronics industry, including semiconductors, computers, software, communications, space and television electronics. Fairchild Publications started the newspaper in 1957, as a complement to its other trade newspapers, including '' Women's Wear Daily'', ''Home Furnishing Daily'', ''Supermarket News'', among others. At its peak in 1984, ''Electronic News'' took in $25 million in revenue with margins above 50%. The following year, the newspaper began losing advertising and influence to rival '' Electronic Engineering Times'', beginning a decline that eventually led to the newspaper's demise. In 1971, journalist Don Hoefler published a series of articles entitled "Silicon Valley, USA" in ''Electronic News''. This is thought to be th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used before a signal sampler to restrict the bandwidth of a signal such as in audio applications. * Manual anti-aliasing, an artistic technique done in pixel art graphics to smooth transitions between shapes, soften lines or blur edges. * Computer-generated imagery (CGI), the application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in art, printed media, simulators, videos and video games. * Spatial anti-aliasing, the technique of minimizing aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution ** Fast approximate anti-aliasing (FXAA), an anti-aliasing algorithm created by Timothy Lottes under Nvidia. May also be referred to as Fast Sample Anti-aliasing (FSAA). ** Multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA), a type of spatial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha Compositing
In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate passes or layers and then combine the resulting 2D images into a single, final image called the composite. Compositing is used extensively in film when combining computer-rendered image elements with live footage. Alpha blending is also used in 2D computer graphics to put rasterized foreground elements over a background. In order to combine the picture elements of the images correctly, it is necessary to keep an associated '' matte'' for each element in addition to its color. This matte layer contains the coverage information—the shape of the geometry being drawn—making it possible to distinguish between parts of the image where something was drawn and parts that are empty. Although the most basic operation of combining two images is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subpixel Rendering
Subpixel rendering is a method used to increase the effective resolution of a color display device. It utilizes the composition of each pixel, which consists of three subpixels of which are red, green, and blue that can each be individually addressable on the display matrix. Subpixel rendering is primarily used for text rendering on standard DPI displays. Despite the inherent color anomalies, it can also be used to render general graphics. History The origin of subpixel rendering as used today remains controversial. Apple Inc., IBM, and Microsoft patented various implementations with certain technical differences owing to the different purposes their technologies were intended for. Microsoft had several patents in the United States on subpixel rendering technology for text rendering on RGB Stripe layouts. The patents 6,219,025, 6,239,783, 6,307,566, 6,225,973, 6,243,070, 6,393,145, 6,421,054, 6,282,327, 6,624,828 were filed between October 7, 1998, and October 7, 1999, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gouraud Shading
Gouraud shading ( ), named after Henri Gouraud (computer scientist), Henri Gouraud, is an interpolation method used in computer graphics to produce continuous shading of surfaces represented by Polygon mesh, polygon meshes. In practice, Gouraud shading is most often used to achieve continuous lighting on triangle meshes by computing the lighting at the corners of each triangle and Linear interpolation, linearly interpolating the resulting colours for each pixel covered by the triangle. Gouraud first published the technique in 1971. However, enhanced hardware support for superior shading models has yielded Gouraud shading largely obsolete in modern rendering. Description Gouraud shading works as follows: An estimate to the Normal (geometry), surface normal of each Vertex (geometry), vertex in a polygonal 3D model is either specified for each vertex or found by averaging the surface normals of the polygons that meet at each vertex. Using these estimates, lighting computations ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Buffering
In computer science, multiple buffering is the use of more than one buffer to hold a block of data, so that a " reader" will see a complete (though perhaps old) version of the data instead of a partially updated version of the data being created by a "writer". It is very commonly used for computer display images. It is also used to avoid the need to use dual-ported RAM (DPRAM) when the readers and writers are different devices. Description Double buffering Petri net The Petri net in the illustration shows double buffering. Transitions W1 and W2 represent writing to buffer 1 and 2 respectively while R1 and R2 represent reading from buffer 1 and 2 respectively. At the beginning, only the transition W1 is enabled. After W1 fires, R1 and W2 are both enabled and can proceed in parallel. When they finish, R2 and W1 proceed in parallel and so on. After the initial transient where W1 fires alone, this system is periodic and the transitions are enabled – always in pairs (R1 with W2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Z-buffering
A z-buffer, also known as a depth buffer, is a type of data buffer used in computer graphics to store the depth information of fragments. The values stored represent the distance to the camera, with 0 being the closest. The encoding scheme may be flipped with the highest number being the value closest to camera. In a 3D-rendering pipeline, when an object is projected on the screen, the depth (z-value) of a generated fragment in the projected screen image is compared to the value already stored in the buffer (depth test), and replaces it if the new value is closer. It works in tandem with the rasterizer, which computes the colored values. The fragment output by the rasterizer is saved if it is not overlapped by another fragment. Z-buffering is a technique used in almost all contemporary computers, laptops, and mobile phones for generating 3D computer graphics. The primary use now is for video games, which require fast and accurate processing of 3D scenes. Usage Occlusion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
