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3dfx
3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s until 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. The success of the company's products led to renewed interest in 3D gaming, and by the second half of the 1990s, products combining a 2D output with reasonable 3D performance were appearing. This was accelerated by the introduction of Microsoft's Direct3D, which provided a single high-performance API that could be implemente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voodoo Graphics
3dfx Interactive was an American technology 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 late 1990s until 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. The success of the company's products led to renewed interest in 3D gaming, and by the second half of the 1990s, products combining a 2D output with reasonable 3D performance were appearing. This was accelerated by the introduction of Microsoft's Direct3D, which provided a single high-performance API that could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glide API
Glide is a 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx Interactive for their ''Voodoo Graphics'' 3D accelerator cards. Although it originally started as a proprietary API, it was later open sourced by 3dfx. It was dedicated to rendering performance, supporting geometry and texture mapping primarily, in data formats identical to those used internally in their cards. Wide adoption of 3Dfx led to Glide being extensively used in the late 1990s, but further refinement of Microsoft's Direct3D and the appearance of full OpenGL implementations from other graphics card vendors, in addition to growing diversity in 3D hardware, eventually caused it to become superfluous. Glide wrappers and emulators Glide emulator development has been in progress since the late 1990s. During 3dfx's lifetime, the company was aggressive at trying to stop these attempts to emulate their proprietary API, shutting down early emulation projects with legal threats. However, just before it ceased operations and had its ... [...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 is elected for four year terms, like the state's other constitutional officers; the officeholder is restricted by term limits to two terms. The current secretary of state is Shirley Weber, who assumed the role following the resignation of Alex Padilla, who was appointed to become the U.S. Senator for California following Kamala Harris' resignation to become the Vice President of the United States. 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 corpora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texture Mapping
Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. History The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mapping originally referred to diffuse mapping, a method that simply mapped pixels from a texture to a 3D surface ("wrapping" the image around the object). In recent decades, the advent of multi-pass rendering, multitexturing, mipmaps, and more complex mappings such as height mapping, bump mapping, normal mapping, displacement mapping, reflection mapping, specular mapping, occlusion mapping, and many other variations on the technique (controlled by a materials system) have made it possible to simulate near-photorealism in real time by vastly reducing the number of polygons and lighting calculations needed to construct a realistic and functional 3D scene. Texture maps A is an image applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or polygon. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchid Technology
Orchid Technology was a privately held company founded by Le Nhon Bui in 1982. History 1982 to 1984 The company's original flagship product was its PCNet card, a 1 megabit-per-second LAN (networking) card for IBM PCs and clones. Notably, the acronym LAN (Local Area Networking) is the Vietnamese word for "Orchid". Hence, the origin of the company name. Also in 1982, it introduced the Orchid Graphics Adapter, a graphics board for IBM PC compatible computers. It was intended to provide high resolution (at the time) monochrome graphic abilities to computers limited to text displays. It was aimed at the business market and one of the three first third party graphic boards for PCs. After this successful product, the company embarked on introducing high-performance add-in cards, most notably the LIM ( Lotus, Intel Microsoft standard) which extended DOS out to 1M, Multi-purpose network cards that included RAM, clock, serial printer ports and Network COAX TCP-IP capabilities. Orchid deve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GameSpot
''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition to the information produced by ''GameSpot'' staff, the site also allows users to write their own reviews, blogs, and post on the site's forums. It has been owned by Fandom, Inc. since October 2022. In 2004, ''GameSpot'' won "Best Gaming Website" as chosen by the viewers in Spike TV's second ''Video Game Award Show'', and has won Webby Awards several times. The domain ''gamespot.com'' attracted at least 60 million visitors annually by October 2008 according to a Compete.com study. History In January 1996, Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein quit their positions at IDG and founded SpotMedia Communications. SpotMedia then launched ''GameSpot'' on May 1, 1996. Originally, ''GameSpot'' focused solely on personal computer games, so a sis ... [...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'' t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) began developing OpenGL in 1991 and released it on June 30, 1992; applications use it extensively in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video games. Since 2006, OpenGL has been managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. Design The OpenGL specification describes an abstract API for drawing 2D and 3D graphics. Although it is possible for the API to be implemented entirely in software, it is designed to be implemented mostly or entirely in hardware. The API is defined as a set of functions which may be called by the client program, alongside a set of named intege ... [...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 gaming console, the ''X'' was used as the basis of the name 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 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 API within DirectX) is widely used in the develop ... [...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 even television electronics. History and profile 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 t ... [...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, artistic technique done in pixel art graphics to smooth transitions between shapes, to soften lines or to blur edges. * Spatial anti-aliasing, the technique of minimizing aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution ** Fast approximate anti-aliasing, an anti-aliasing algorithm created by Timothy Lottes under Nvidia. May also be referred to as Fast Sample Anti-aliasing (FSAA). ** Multisample anti-aliasing, a type of spatial anti-aliasing method ** Supersampling, a type of spatial anti-aliasing method * Temporal anti-aliasing, techniques to reduce or remove the effects of temporal aliasing in moving i ... [...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] |
