|
Skybox (video Games)
A skybox is a method of creating backgrounds to make a video game level appear larger than it really is. When a skybox is used, the level is enclosed in a cuboid. The sky, distant mountains, distant buildings, and other unreachable objects are projected onto the cube's faces (using a technique called cube mapping), thus creating the illusion of distant three-dimensional surroundings. A skydome employs the same concept but uses either a sphere or a hemisphere instead of a cube. Processing of 3D graphics is computationally expensive, especially in real-time games, and poses multiple limits. Levels have to be processed at tremendous speeds, making it difficult to render vast skyscapes in real-time. Additionally, real-time graphics generally have depth buffers with limited bit-depth, which puts a limit on the amount of details that can be rendered at a distance. To avoid these problems, games often employ skyboxes. Traditionally, these are simple cubes with up to six different t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skybox Example
{{disambiguation ...
Skybox may refer to: * Skybox (band), an American indie pop band * Skybox (sports), a type of private luxury seating area in sports stadiums * Skybox (video games), a construct used in 3D graphics to simulate skies * Skybox Imaging, a satellite operator * SkyBox International, a trading card company * SkyBox Labs, video game developer * Sky box or Digibox, a set-top box provided by Sky UK * Skybox, a song from ''Wunna'' (album) * SkyBOX, a waterslide by ProSlide Technology ProSlide Technology, Inc. is a Canadian designer and manufacturer of water rides and water park resorts. They design and manufacture both traditional slides and innovative rides such as water coasters, funnel-shaped Tornado slides, and Bowl slid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Z-buffering
A depth buffer, also known as a z-buffer, is a type of data buffer used in computer graphics to represent depth information of objects in 3D space from a particular perspective. Depth buffers are an aid to rendering a scene to ensure that the correct polygons properly occlude other polygons. Z-buffering was first described in 1974 by Wolfgang Straßer in his PhD thesis on fast algorithms for rendering occluded objects. A similar solution to determining overlapping polygons is the painter's algorithm, which is capable of handling non-opaque scene elements, though at the cost of efficiency and incorrect results. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cube Mapping
In computer graphics, cube mapping is a method of environment mapping that uses the six faces of a cube as the map shape. The environment is projected onto the sides of a cube and stored as six square textures, or unfolded into six regions of a single texture. The cube map is generated by first rendering the scene six times from a viewpoint, with the views defined by a 90 degree view frustum representing each cube face. In the majority of cases, cube mapping is preferred over the older method of sphere mapping because it eliminates many of the problems that are inherent in sphere mapping such as image distortion, viewpoint dependency, and computational inefficiency. Also, cube mapping provides a much larger capacity to support real-time rendering of reflections relative to sphere mapping because the combination of inefficiency and viewpoint dependency severely limits the ability of sphere mapping to be applied when there is a consistently changing viewpoint. Variants of cube map ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City 17
The ''Half-Life'' video game series features many locations set in a dystopian future stemming from the events of the first game, ''Half-Life''. These locations are used and referred to throughout the series. The locations, for the most part, are designed and modeled from real-world equivalent locations in Eastern Europe, but also include science fiction settings including the Black Mesa Research Facility, a labyrinthine subterranean research complex, and Xen, an alien dimension. ''Half-Life'' and expansions Black Mesa Research Facility The Black Mesa Research Facility (shortened to B.M.R.F) is the primary setting for ''Half-Life'' and its three expansions: ''Opposing Force'', '' Blue Shift'', and ''Decay''. The base is a decommissioned ICBM launch complex at an undisclosed New Mexico desert location, which has been converted into a scientific research facility and bears a number of similarities to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Area 51. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half-Life 2
''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was published by Valve through its distribution service Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. Players control Gordon Freeman as he joins a resistance movement to liberate the Earth from the control of an alien empire, the Combine. ''Half-Life 2'' was created using Valve's Source engine, which was developed at the same time. Development lasted five years and cost million. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, set his team the goal of redefining the first-person shooter genre. They integrated the Havok physics engine, which simulates real-world physics, to reinforce the player's sense of presence and create new gameplay, and developed the characterization, with more detailed character models and realistic animation. Valve announced ''Half-Life 2'' at E3 2003, with a release date ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Source Engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the release of '' Counter-Strike: Source'' and '' Half-Life 2''. Updates to Source were released in incremental versions, with the engine being succeeded by Source 2 by the late 2010s. History Source distantly originates from the GoldSrc engine, itself a heavily modified version of John Carmack's Quake engine with some code from the Quake II engine. Carmack commented on his blog in 2004 that "there are still bits of early ''Quake'' code in ''Half-Life 2''". Valve employee Erik Johnson explained the engine's nomenclature on the Valve Developer Community: Source was developed part-by-part from this fork onwards, slowly replacing GoldSrc in Valve's internal projects and, in part, explaining the reasons behind its unusually modular nature. Valve's development of Source since has been a mixture of licensed middleware and in-house-developed code. Among others, Source uses Bink Video ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unreal (1998 Video Game)
''Unreal'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows in May 1998. It was powered by Unreal Engine, an original game engine. The game reached sales of 1.5 million units by 2002. Since the release of ''Unreal'', the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the ''Unreal'' universe. One official bonus pack, the Epic-released Fusion Map Pack, can be downloaded free of charge. ''Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali'', developed by Legend Entertainment, was released in June 1999, and added 17 new missions to the single-player campaign of ''Unreal''. ''Unreal'' and ''Return to Na Pali'' would later be bundled together as ''Unreal Gold''. Additionally, the games were updated to run on the ''Unreal Tournament'' version of the game engine. Plot The player takes on the part of Prisoner 849, aboard the prison spacecraft ''Vortex Rikers''. During transport to a moon-based ... [...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] |
Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby objects show a larger parallax than farther objects when observed from different positions, so parallax can be used to determine distances. To measure large distances, such as the distance of a planet or a star from Earth, astronomers use the principle of parallax. Here, the term ''parallax'' is the semi-angle of inclination between two sight-lines to the star, as observed when Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit. These distances form the lowest rung of what is called "the cosmic distance ladder", the first in a succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects, serving as a basis for other distance measurements in astronomy forming the higher rungs of the ladder. Parallax also affects optical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3D Computer Graphics
3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering digital images, usually 2D images but sometimes 3D images. The resulting images may be stored for viewing later (possibly as an animation) or displayed in real time. 3D computer graphics, contrary to what the name suggests, are most often displayed on two-dimensional displays. Unlike 3D film and similar techniques, the result is two-dimensional, without visual depth. More often, 3D graphics are being displayed on 3D displays, like in virtual reality systems. 3D graphics stand in contrast to 2D computer graphics which typically use completely different methods and formats for creation and rendering. 3D computer graphics rely on many of the same algorithms as 2D computer vector gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skybox Sky
{{disambiguation ...
Skybox may refer to: * Skybox (band), an American indie pop band * Skybox (sports), a type of private luxury seating area in sports stadiums * Skybox (video games), a construct used in 3D graphics to simulate skies * Skybox Imaging, a satellite operator * SkyBox International, a trading card company * SkyBox Labs, video game developer * Sky box or Digibox, a set-top box provided by Sky UK * Skybox, a song from ''Wunna'' (album) * SkyBOX, a waterslide by ProSlide Technology ProSlide Technology, Inc. is a Canadian designer and manufacturer of water rides and water park resorts. They design and manufacture both traditional slides and innovative rides such as water coasters, funnel-shaped Tornado slides, and Bowl slid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sphere
A sphere () is a Geometry, geometrical object that is a solid geometry, three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three-dimensional space.. That given point is the centre (geometry), centre of the sphere, and is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the Greek mathematics, ancient Greek mathematicians. The sphere is a fundamental object in many fields of mathematics. Spheres and nearly-spherical shapes also appear in nature and industry. Bubble (physics), Bubbles such as soap bubbles take a spherical shape in equilibrium. spherical Earth, The Earth is often approximated as a sphere in geography, and the celestial sphere is an important concept in astronomy. Manufactured items including pressure vessels and most curved mirrors and lenses are based on spheres. Spheres rolling, roll smoothly in any direction, so mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
