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Virge
The S3 ViRGE (Video and Rendering Graphics Engine) graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/ 3D accelerators designed for the mass market. Introduced in 1995 by then graphics powerhouse S3, Inc., the ViRGE was S3's first foray into 3D-graphics. The S3/Virge was the successor to the successful Trio64V+. ViRGE/325 was pin compatible with the Trio64 chip, retaining the DRAM-framebuffer interface (up to 4MB), and clocking both the core and memory up to 80 MHz. In Windows, Virge was benchmarked as the fastest DRAM-based accelerator of the era. The VRAM-based version, ViRGE/VX, was actually slower in lower resolutions, but had a faster RAMDAC to support high-resolution modes not available on the 325. Support Part of S3's marketing plan for the ViRGE included the "S3D" standard, stating that members of the ViRGE family carried the ''S3D Graphics Engine''. Games that supported ViRGE directly put this logo on their box so owners of the 3D card would know that it would run as well a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rendition (company)
Rendition, Inc., was a maker of 3D computer graphics chipsets in the mid to late 1990s. They were known for products such as the Vérité 1000 and Vérité 2x00 and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to directly work with '' Quake'' developer John Carmack to make a hardware-accelerated version of the game (vQuake). Rendition's major competitor at the time was 3Dfx. Their proprietary rendering APIs were Speedy3D (for DOS) and RRedline (for Windows). 3D Chipsets Vérité V1000 Released in 1996, Rendition's V1000 chipset was notable for its RISC-based architecture. The V1000 was the first PC graphics card to utilize a programmable core to render 3D graphics. V1000 was both faster and more advanced (in terms of features) than competitors such as the Matrox Millennium, ATI Rage/3D, and S3 Virge3D. Only 3DFX's Voodoo Graphics was faster, but unlike the 3DFX Voodoo, the V1000 included 2D/VGA capability making it the only acceptably fast single-board solution for 3D game ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S3 Graphics
S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvidia, it merged with hardware manufacturer Diamond Multimedia in 1999. The resulting company renamed itself to SONICblue Incorporated, and, two years later, the graphics portion was spun off into a new joint effort with VIA Technologies. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market. VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics was purchased by HTC in 2011. History S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company. The company's first products were among the earliest graphical user interface (GUI) accelerators. These chips were popular with video card manufacturers, and their followup designs, including the Trio64, made strong inroads with OEMs. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S3 Logo
S3, S-3 or S03 may refer to: Entertainment * ''Si3'' (flim), originally titled ''S III'' and also known as ''Singam 3'', the third film in the ''Singam'' franchise * ''Expedition to the Barrier Peaks'', code S3, a 1980 ''Dungeons & Dragons'' adventure module * S3 Plan, a fictitious program in the '' Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty'' video game *SABC 3, South African public television channel, stylised as S3 Transportation Airlines * Ashland Municipal Airport, FAA Location identifier S03, in Oregon, US * SBA Airlines, IATA code S3, based in Caracas, Venezuela Locomotives * ALCO S-3, an American diesel switching (shunting) locomotive; see ALCO S-1 and S-3 * NER Class S3, a North Eastern Railway steam locomotive * Prussian S 3, a steam locomotive Rail lines * S3 (Berlin), an S-Bahn line * S3 (Munich), an S-Bahn line in Bavaria, Germany * S3 (Nuremberg), an S-Bahn line in Bavaria, Germany * S3 (RER Vaud), an S-Bahn line in Switzerland * S3 (Rhine-Main S-Bahn), an S-Bahn line ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terracide
''Terracide'' is a zero-G first-person shooter developed by Simis and published by Eidos Interactive in 1997. Gameplay ''Terracide'' plays out in a six degrees of freedom style, much like ''Descent'', in a similar way in which the player is mostly cruising around levels until they find an enemy to attack, although sometimes the player is given on-screen objectives which are required to be completed to continue. Mouse controls are disabled by default, although add-ons such as an on-screen crosshair or mouse control can be enabled in the game's menu. Reviews Stephen Poole on CNET's Reviews section rates ''Terracide'' 3/5 as "Good", with its major flaws commented that ''Terracide'' is "an unabashed ''Descent'' clone coupled with a tired "save the earth from destruction by alien invaders" story", and its biggest issue was the control in which "it was almost impossible to line up shots on a consistent basis because the ship wouldn't stop turning when I wanted it to". ''Terracide'' ... [...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] |
Direct3D
Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphics card, allowing for hardware acceleration of the entire 3D rendering pipeline or even only partial acceleration. Direct3D exposes the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D graphics hardware, including Z-buffering, W-buffering, stencil buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, alpha blending, color blending, mipmapping, texture blending, clipping, culling, atmospheric effects, perspective-correct texture mapping, programmable HLSL shaders and effects. Integration with other DirectX technologies enables Direct3D to deliver such features as video mapping, hardware 3D rendering in 2D overlay planes, and even sprites, providing the use of 2D and 3D graphics in interactive media ties. Direct3D contains many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quake Engine
The ''Quake'' engine is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game '' Quake''. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. After release, it immediately forked, as did the level design. Much of the engine remained in ''Quake II'' and ''Quake III Arena''. The ''Quake'' engine, like the ''Doom'' engine, used binary space partitioning (BSP) to optimise the world rendering. The ''Quake'' engine also used Gouraud shading for moving objects, and a static lightmap for nonmoving objects. Historically, the ''Quake'' engine has been treated as a separate engine from its successor, the ''Quake II'' engine. However, both engines are now considered variants of id Tech 2. Although, the codebases for ''Quake'' and ''Quake II'' were separate GPL releases. History The ''Quake'' engine was developed from 1995 for the video game ''Quake'', released on June 22, 1996. John Carmack did mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Video RAM
Dual-ported video RAM, or VRAM, is a dual-ported variant of dynamic RAM (DRAM), which was once commonly used to store the framebuffer in graphics adapters. Note that most computers and game consoles do not use this form of memory, and dual-ported VRAM should not be confused with other forms of video memory. History It was invented by F. Dill, D. Ling and R. Matick at IBM Research in 1980, with a patent issued in 1985 (US Patent 4,541,075). The first commercial use of VRAM was in a high-resolution graphics adapter introduced in 1986 by IBM for its RT PC system, which set a new standard for graphics displays. Prior to the development of VRAM, dual-ported memory was quite expensive, limiting higher resolution bitmapped graphics to high-end workstations. VRAM improved the overall framebuffer throughput, allowing low cost, high-resolution, high-speed, color graphics. Modern GUI-based operating systems benefitted from this and thus it provided a key ingredient for proliferation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bilinear Filtering
In mathematics, bilinear interpolation is a method for interpolating functions of two variables (e.g., ''x'' and ''y'') using repeated linear interpolation. It is usually applied to functions sampled on a 2D rectilinear grid, though it can be generalized to functions defined on the vertices of (a mesh of) arbitrary convex quadrilaterals. Bilinear interpolation is performed using linear interpolation first in one direction, and then again in the other direction. Although each step is linear in the sampled values and in the position, the interpolation as a whole is not linear but rather quadratic in the sample location. Bilinear interpolation is one of the basic resampling techniques in computer vision and image processing, where it is also called bilinear filtering or bilinear texture mapping. Computation Suppose that we want to find the value of the unknown function ''f'' at the point (''x'', ''y''). It is assumed that we know the value of ''f'' at the four points ''Q''11 = ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Descent (video Game)
''Descent'' is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots. ''Descent'' was a commercial success. Together with its sequel, it sold over 1.1 million units as of 1998 and was critically acclaimed. Commentators and reviewers compared it to ''Doom'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PlayStation (console)
The (abbreviated as PS, commonly known as the PS1/PS one or its codename PSX) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, in North America on 9 September 1995, in Europe on 29 September 1995, and in Australia on 15 November 1995. As a fifth-generation console, the PlayStation primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. Sony began developing the PlayStation after a failed venture with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1990s. The console was primarily designed by Ken Kutaragi and Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan, while additional development was outsourced in the United Kingdom. An emphasis on 3D polygon graphics was placed at the forefront of the console's design. PlayStation game production was designed to be streamlined and inclusive, enticing the support of many third-party developers. The console proved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
