Michael Abrash
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Michael Abrash
Michael Abrash is a programmer and technical writer specializing in code optimization and 80x86 assembly language. He wrote the 1990 book ''Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge'' and a monthly column in '' Dr. Dobb's Journal'' in the early 1990s. A later book, ''Zen of Graphics Programming'', applied these ideas to 2D and 3D graphics prior to the advent of hardware accelerators for the PC. Though not strictly a game programmer, Abrash has worked on the underlying technology for games, such as '' Quake'', for much of his career. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms Game programmer Abrash was a game programmer in the early days of the IBM PC. His first commercial game was a clone of ''Space Invaders'' published by Datamost in 1982 as '' Space Strike''. He co-authored several games with Dan Illowsky, who had previously written the successful ''Pac-Man'' clone ''Snack Attack'' for the Apple II. Abrash and Illowsky worked to ...
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Oculus VR
Reality Labs is a business of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon Worlds. Reality Labs is the corporate successor to Oculus, a company that was founded in 2012 by Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov and Nate Mitchell to develop a VR headset for video gaming known as the Oculus Rift. Before the acquisition, Oculus raised over $2.4 million for the project via a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter—nearly ten times the original goal of $250,000. Oculus was acquired by Facebook in March 2014. The company partnered with Samsung Electronics to release the Gear VR accessory for Samsung Galaxy smartphones in 2015. In March 2016, Oculus released the first consumer version of the Rift headset. In 2017, the company released a standalone mobile headset known as Oculus Go, produced by Xiaomi. In 2019, i ...
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Cosmic Crusader
''Cosmic Crusader'' is a fixed shooter video game for IBM PC compatibles programmed by Michael Abrash and published in 1982 by Funtastic as a self-booting disk. External linksReviewin PC MagazineReviewin PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ... 1982 video games Fixed shooters Video games developed in the United States Funtastic games Single-player video games {{fixed-shooter-videogame-stub ...
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GPGPU
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditionally handled by the central processing unit (CPU). The use of multiple video cards in one computer, or large numbers of graphics chips, further parallelizes the already parallel nature of graphics processing. Essentially, a GPGPU pipeline is a kind of parallel processing between one or more GPUs and CPUs that analyzes data as if it were in image or other graphic form. While GPUs operate at lower frequencies, they typically have many times the number of cores. Thus, GPUs can process far more pictures and graphical data per second than a traditional CPU. Migrating data into graphical form and then using the GPU to scan and analyze it can create a large speedup. GPGPU pipelines were developed at the beginning of the 21st century for graphic ...
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Larrabee (microarchitecture)
Larrabee is the codename for a cancelled GPGPU chip that Intel was developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. It is named after either Mount Larrabee or Larrabee State Park in Whatcom County, Washington, near the town of Bellingham. The chip was to be released in 2010 as the core of a consumer 3D graphics card, but these plans were cancelled due to delays and disappointing early performance figures. The project to produce a GPU retail product directly from the Larrabee research project was terminated in May 2010 and its technology was passed on to the Xeon Phi. The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing. Almost a decade later, on June 12, 2018; the idea of an Intel dedicated GPU was revived again with Intel's desire to create a discrete GPU by 2 ...
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Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series of instruction sets, the instruction sets found in most personal computers (PCs). Incorporated in Delaware, Intel ranked No. 45 in the 2020 ''Fortune'' 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years. Intel supplies microprocessors for computer system manufacturers such as Acer, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Intel also manufactures motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphics chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and computing. Intel (''int''egrated and ''el''ectronics) was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore's law) and Robert Noyce ( ...
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Unreal Tournament 2004
''Unreal Tournament 2004'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. Part of the ''Unreal'' franchise, it is the third game in the ''Unreal Tournament'' series and the sequel to ''Unreal Tournament 2003''. Among significant changes to gameplay mechanics and visual presentation, one of the major additions introduced by ''Unreal Tournament 2004'' is the inclusion of vehicles and the Onslaught game type, allowing for large-scale battles. A sequel, '' Unreal Tournament 3'', was released on November 19, 2007. Plot The game is set in a universe where humans long before fought a war with the Skaarj, leaving their galactic empire in shambles. To assist in the rebuilding of the colonies by calming down enraged colonists, the Liandri Corporation came up with the idea of staging a gladiatorial tournament for the miners. The interest was so high that it grew into a sport, with sponsored teams battling in specially made arenas. From the ver ...
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DirectX 7
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 developm ...
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Software Rendering
Software rendering is the process of generating an image from a model by means of computer software. In the context of computer graphics rendering, software rendering refers to a rendering process that is not dependent upon graphics hardware ASICs, such as a graphics card. The rendering takes place entirely in the CPU. Rendering everything with the (general-purpose) CPU has the main advantage that it is not restricted to the (limited) capabilities of graphics hardware, but the disadvantage is that more semiconductors are needed to obtain the same speed. Rendering is used in architecture, simulators, video games, movies and television visual effects and design visualization. Rendering is the last step in an animation process, and gives the final appearance to the models and animation with visual effects such as shading, texture-mapping, shadows, reflections and motion blur. Rendering can be split into two main categories: real-time rendering (also known as online rendering), and ...
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Xbox (console)
The Xbox is a home video game console and the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles manufactured by Microsoft. It was released as Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. It is classified as a sixth-generation console, competing with Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993. The console was announced in March 2000. With the release of the PlayStation 2, which featured the ability to playback CD-ROMs and DVDs in addition to playing games, Microsoft became concerned that game consoles would threaten the personal computer as an entertainment device for living rooms. Whereas most games consoles to that point were built from custom hardware components, the Xbox was built around standard personal computer components, using variations of Micro ...
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Id Software
id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC (running MS-DOS and Windows), including work done for the '' Wolfenstein'', ''Doom'', and '' Quake'' franchises. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre: ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is often considered to be the first true FPS; ''Doom'' is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general; and '' Quake'' was id's first true 3D FPS. On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company. In 2015, they opened a second studio in Frankfurt, Germany. ...
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Video Game Industry
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , video games generated annually in global sales. In the US, it earned about in 2007, in 2008, and 2010, according to the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record ; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to in 2022; the industry is not recession-proof. The industry has influenced the advance of personal computers with sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CPUs, and co-processors like PhysX. Sound cards, for example, were originally developed for games and then improved for the music industry. Industry overview Size In 2017 in the United Stat ...
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