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How Graphics Cards Work

The images you see on your monitor are made of tiny dots called pixels. At most
common resolution settings, a screen displays over a million pixels, and the
computer has to decide what to do with every one in order to create an image. To
do this, it needs a translator -- something to take binary from the CPU and turn it
into a picture you can see. Unless a computer has graphics capability built into the
motherboard, that translation takes place on the graphics card.
A graphics card's job is complex, but its principles and components are easy to
understand. In this article, we will look at the basic parts of a video card and what
they do. We'll also examine the factors that work together to make a fast, efficient
graphics card.
Think of a computer as a company with its own art department. When people in the
company want a piece of artwork, they send a request to the art department. The
art department decides how to create the image and then puts it on paper. The end
result is that someone's idea becomes an actual, viewable picture.
A graphics card works along the same principles. The CPU, working in conjunction
with software applications, sends information about the image to the graphics card.
The graphics card decides how to use the pixels on the screen to create the image.
It then sends that information to the monitor through a cable.
Creating an image out of binary data is a demanding process. To make a 3-D image,
the graphics card first creates a wire frame out of straight lines. Then,
it rasterizes the image (fills in the remaining pixels). It also adds lighting, texture
and color. For fast-paced games, the computer has to go through this process about
sixty times per second. Without a graphics card to perform the necessary
calculations, the workload would be too much for the computer to handle.

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The graphics card accomplishes this task using four main components:

A motherboard connection for data and power

A processor to decide what to do with each pixel on the screen

Memory to hold information about each pixel and to temporarily store

completed pictures

A monitor connection so you can see the final result

Graphics cards take data from the CPU and turn it into pictures. Find out
the parts of a graphics card and read expert reviews of graphics cards.
The GPU
Like a motherboard, a graphics card is a printed circuit board that houses
a processor and RAM. It also has an input/output system(BIOS) chip, which stores
the card's settings and performs diagnostics on the memory, input and output at
startup. A graphics card's processor, called agraphics processing unit (GPU), is
similar to a computer's CPU. A GPU, however, is designed specifically for performing
the complex mathematical and geometric calculations that are necessary for
graphics rendering. Some of the fastest GPUs have more transistors than the
average CPU. A GPU produces a lot of heat, so it is usually located under a heat sink
or a fan.
In addition to its processing power, a GPU uses special programming to help it
analyze and use data. ATI and nVidia produce the vast majority of GPUs on the
market, and both companies have developed their own enhancements for GPU
performance. To improve image quality, the processors use:

Full scene anti aliasing (FSAA), which smoothes the edges of 3-D objects

Anisotropic filtering (AF), which makes images look crisper

Each company has also developed specific techniques to help the GPU apply colors,
shading, textures and patterns.

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As the GPU creates images, it needs somewhere to hold information and completed
pictures. It uses the card's RAM for this purpose, storing data about each pixel, its
color and its location on the screen. Part of the RAM can also act as a frame buffer,
meaning that it holds completed images until it is time to display them. Typically,
video RAM operates at very high speeds and is dual ported, meaning that the
system can read from it and write to it at the same time.
The RAM connects directly to the digital-to-analog converter, called the DAC.
This converter, also called the RAMDAC, translates the image into an analog signal
that the monitor can use. Some cards have multiple RAMDACs, which can improve
performance and support more than one monitor. You can learn more about this
process in How Analog and Digital Recording Works.
The RAMDAC sends the final picture to the monitor through a cable. We'll look at
this connection and other interfaces in the next section.
THE EVOLUTION OF GRAPHICS CARDS
Graphics cards have come a long way since IBM introduced the first one in 1981.
Called a Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA), the card provided text-only
displays of green or white text on a black screen. Now, the minimum standard for
new video cards is Video Graphics Array (VGA), which allows 256 colors. With
high-performance standards like Quantum Extended Graphics Array (QXGA),
video cards can display millions of colors at resolutions of up to 2040 x 1536 pixels.

This Radeon X800XL graphics card has DVI, VGA and ViVo connections.
PCI Connection
Graphics cards connect to the computer through the motherboard.
The motherboard supplies power to the card and lets it communicate with the CPU.
Newer graphics cards often require more power than the motherboard can provide,
so they also have a direct connection to the computer's power supply.
Connections to the motherboard are usually through one of three interfaces:

Peripheral component interconnect (PCI)

Advanced graphics port (AGP)

PCI Express (PCIe)

PCI Express is the newest of the three and provides the fastest transfer rates
between the graphics card and the motherboard. PCIe also supports the use of two
graphics cards in the same computer.
Most graphics cards have two monitor connections. Often, one is a DVI connector,
which supports LCD screens, and the other is a VGA connector, which
supports CRT screens. Some graphics cards have two DVI connectors instead. But
that doesn't rule out using a CRT screen; CRT screens can connect to DVI ports
through an adapter. At one time, Apple made monitors that used the proprietary
Apple Display Connector (ADC). Although these monitors are still in use, new Apple
monitors use a DVI connection.
Most people use only one of their two monitor connections. People who need to use
two monitors can purchase a graphics card with dual head capability, which splits
the display between the two screens. A computer with two dual head, PCIe-enabled
video cards could theoretically support four monitors.
In addition to connections for the motherboard and monitor, some graphics cards
have connections for:

TV display: TV-out or S-video

Analog video cameras: ViVo or video in/video out

Digital cameras: FireWire or USB

Some cards also incorporate TV tuners. Next, we'll look at how to choose a good
graphics card.
DIRECTX AND OPEN GL
DirectX and Open GL are application programming interfaces, or APIs. An API
helps hardware and software communicate more efficiently by providing
instructions for complex tasks, like 3-D rendering. Developers optimize graphicsintensive games for specific APIs. This is why the newest games often require
updated versions of DirectX or Open GL to work correctly.
APIs are different from drivers, which are programs that allow hardware to
communicate with a computer's operating system. But as with updated APIs,
updated device drivers can help programs run correctly.
Choosing a Good Graphics Card

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A top-of-the-line graphics card is easy to spot. It has lots of memoryand a
fast processor. Often, it's also more visually appealing than anything else that's
intended to go inside a computer's case. Lots of high-performance video cards are
illustrated or have decorative fans or heat sinks.
But a high-end card provides more power than most people really need. People who
use their computers primarily for e-mail, word processing or Web surfing can find all
the necessary graphics support on a motherboard with integrated graphics. A midrange card is sufficient for most casual gamers. People who need the power of a
high-end card include gaming enthusiasts and people who do lots of 3-D graphic
work.
A good overall measurement of a card's performance is its frame rate, measured
in frames per second (FPS). The frame rate describes how many complete images
the card can display per second. The human eye can process about 25 frames every
second, but fast-action games require a frame rate of at least 60 FPS to provide
smooth animation and scrolling. Components of the frame rate are:

Triangles or vertices per second: 3-D images are made of triangles, or

polygons. This measurement describes how quickly the GPU can calculate the
whole polygon or the vertices that define it. In general, it describes how
quickly the card builds a wire frame image.

Pixel fill rate: This measurement describes how many pixels the GPU can
process in a second, which translates to how quickly it can rasterize the
image.

The graphics card's hardware directly affects its speed. These are the hardware
specifications that most affect the card's speed and the units in which they are
measured:

GPU clock speed (MHz)

Size of the memory bus (bits)

Amount of available memory (MB)

Memory clock rate (MHz)

Memory bandwidth (GB/s)

RAMDAC speed (MHz)

The computer's CPU and motherboard also play a part, since a very fast graphics
card can't compensate for a motherboard's inability to deliver data quickly.
Similarly, the card's connection to the motherboard and the speed at which it can
get instructions from the CPU affect its performance.

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For more information on graphics cards and related topics, check out the links on
the following page.
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS AND OVERLOCKING
Many motherboards have integrated graphics capabilities and function without a
separate graphics card. These motherboards handle 2-D images easily, so they are
ideal for productivity and Internet applications. Plugging a separate graphics card
into one of these motherboards overrides the onboard graphics functions.
Some people choose to improve their graphics card's performance by manually
setting their clock speed to a higher rate, known as over clockings. People usually
over clock their memory, since over clocking the GPU can lead to overheating. While
over clocking can lead to better performance, it also voids the manufacturer's
warranty.

How AGP Works

You point, you click; you drag and you drop. Files open and close in separate
windows. Movies play, pop-ups pop, and video games fill the screen, immersing you
in a world of 3-D graphics. This is the stuff we're used to seeing on our computers.
It all started in 1973, when Xerox completed the Alto, the first computer to use a
graphical user interface. This innovation forever changed the way the people work
with their computers.
Today, every aspect of computing, from creating animation to simple tasks such as
word processing and e-mail, uses lots of graphics to create a more intuitive work
environment for the user. The hardware to support these graphics is called a
graphics card. The way this card connects to your computer is key in your
computer's ability to render graphics. In this article, you will learn about AGP,
or Accelerated Graphics Port. AGP enables your computer to have a dedicated

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way to communicate with the graphics card, enhancing both the look and speed of
your computer's graphics.
Get Off the PCI Bus
In 1996, Intel introduced AGP as a more efficient way to deliver the streaming video
and real-time-rendered 3-D graphics that were becoming more prevalent in all
aspects of computing. Previously, the standard method of delivery was the
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus. The PCI bus is a path used to deliver
information from the graphics card to the central processing unit (CPU). A bus allows
multiple packets of information from different sources to travel down one path
simultaneously. Information from the graphics card travels through the bus along
with any other information that is coming from a device connected to the PCI. When
all the information arrives at the CPU, it has to wait in line to get time with the CPU.
This system worked well for many years, but eventually the PCI bus became a little
long in the tooth. The Internet and most software were more and more graphically
oriented, and the demands of the graphics card needed priority over all other PCI
devices.

Typical example of an AGP-based graphics card

AGP is based on the design of the PCI bus; but unlike a bus, it provides a dedicated
point-to-point connection from the graphics card to the CPU. With a clear path to the
CPU and system memory, AGP provides a much faster, more efficient way for your
computer to get the information it needs to render complex graphics. In the next
section, we'll see how this is done
AGP Graphics Rendering
AGP is built on the idea of improving the ways that PCI transports data to the CPU.
Intel achieved this by addressing all of the areas where PCI transfers were causing
data bottlenecks in the system. By clearing the traffic jams of data, AGP increases
the speed at which machines can render graphics while using the system's
resources more efficiently to reduce overall drag. Here's how:

Dedicated Port - There are no other devices connected to the AGP other
than the graphics card. With a dedicated path to the CPU, the graphics card
can always operate at the maximum capacity of the connection.

Pipelining - This method of data organization allows the graphics card to

receive and respond to multiple packets of data in a single request. Here's a
simplified example of this: With AGP, the graphics card can receive a request
for all of the information needed to render a particular image and send it out
all at once. With PCI, the graphics card would receive information on the
height of the image and wait... then the length of the image, and wait... then
the width of the image, and wait... combine the data, and then send it out.

Sideband addressing - Like a letter, all requests and information sent from
one part of your computer to the next must have an address containing "To"
and "From." The problem with PCI is that this "To" and "From" information is
sent with the working data all together in one packet. This is the equivalent of
including an address card inside the envelope when you send a letter to a
friend: Now the post office has to open the envelope to see the address in
order to know where to send it. This takes up the post office's time. In
addition, the address card itself takes up room in the envelope, reducing the
total amount of stuff you can send to your friend. With sideband addressing,
the AGP issues eight additional lines on the data packet just for addressing.
This puts the address on the outside of the envelope, so to speak, freeing up
the total bandwidth of the data path used to transfer information back and
forth. In addition, it unclogs system resources that were previously used to
open the packet to read the addresses.

With PCI, texture maps are loaded from the hard drive to system memory, processed by the CPU and then loaded
into the frame buffer of the graphics card.
Photo courtesy Intel Corporation

PCI Graphics Rendering: Wasting RAM

Speed is not the only area where AGP has bested its predecessor. It also streamlines the process of
rendering graphics by using system memory more efficiently.
Any 3-D graphic you see on your computer is built by a texture map. Texture maps are like wrapping
paper. Your computer takes a flat, 2-D image and wraps it around a set of parameters dictated by the
graphics card to create the appearance of a 3-D image. Think of this as wrapping an invisible box with
wrapping paper to show the size of the box. It is important to understand this because the creation and
storage of texture maps is the main thing that drains the memory from both the graphics card and the
system overall.
With a PCI-based graphics card, every texture map has to be stored twice. First, the texture map is
loaded from the hard drive to the system memory (RAM) until it has to be used. Once it is needed, it is
pulled from memory and sent to the CPU to be processed. Once processed, it is sent through the PCI bus
to the graphics card, where it is stored again in the card's frame buffer. The frame buffer is where the
graphics card holds the image in storage once it has been rendered so that it can be refreshed every time
it is needed. All of this storing and sending between the system and the card is very draining to the overall
performance of the computer.

Diagram of the standard architecture of a Pentium III-based system using

AGP
Photo courtesy Intel Corporation
AGP Memory Improvements

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AGP improves the process of storing texture maps by allowing the operating
system to designate RAM for use by the graphics card on the fly. This type of
memory is called AGP memory or non-local video memory. Using the much more
abundant and faster RAM used by the operating system to store texture maps
reduces the number of maps that have to be stored on the graphics card's memory.
In addition, the size of the texture map your computer is capable of processing is no
longer limited to the amount of RAM on the graphics card.
The other way AGP saves RAM is by only storing texture maps once. It does this with
a little trickery. This trickery takes the form of a chipset called the Graphics
Address Remapping Table (GART). GART takes the portion of the system memory
that the AGP borrows to store texture maps for the graphics card and re-addresses
it. The new address provided by GART makes the CPU think that the texture map is
being stored in the card's frame buffer. GART may be putting bits and pieces of the
map all over the system RAM; but when the CPU needs it, as far as it's concerned
the texture map is right where it should be.
AGP Graphic Cards
AGP and AGP graphics cards are now the standard for processing graphics on
computers. Like all hardware, the technology and specifications are constantly
improving. To learn about the current standards for AGP and prices for AGP graphics
cards, click on the links below.
Specifications:
How 3-D Graphics Work

3-D TECHNOLOGY

How 3-D TV Works

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3-D Printing

Digital 3-D Movies

You're probably reading this on the screen of a computer monitor -- a display

that has two real dimensions, height and width. But when you look at a movie
like "Toy Story II" or play a game like Tom bRaider, you see a window into a
three-dimensional world. One of the truly amazing things about this window is
that the world you see can be the world we live in, the world we will live in
tomorrow, or a world that lives only in the minds of a movies or game's creators.
And all of these worlds can appear on the same screen you use for writing a
report or keeping track of a stock portfolio.
How does your computer trick your eyes into thinking that the flat screen
extends deep into a series of rooms? How do game programmers convince you
that you're seeing real characters move around in a real landscape? We will tell
you about some of the visual tricks 3-D graphic designers use, and how
hardware designers make the tricks happen so fast that they seem like a movie
that reacts to your every move.
What Makes a Picture 3-D?
A picture that has or appears to have height, width and depth is threedimensional (or 3-D). A picture that has height and width but no depth is twodimensional (or 2-D). Some pictures are 2-D on purpose. Think about the
international symbols that indicate which door leads to a restroom, for example.
The symbols are designed so that you can recognize them at a glance. Thats
why they use only the most basic shapes. Additional information on the symbols
might try to tell you what sort of clothes the little man or woman is wearing, the
color of their hair, whether they get to the gym on a regular basis, and so on, but
all of that extra information would tend to make it take longer for you to get the
basic information out of the symbol: which restroom is which. That's one of the
basic differences between how 2-D and 3-D graphics are used: 2-D graphics are
good at communicating something simple, very quickly. 3-D graphics tell a more
complicated story, but have to carry much more information to do it.
For example, triangles have three lines and three angles -- all that's needed to
tell the story of a triangle. A pyramid, however is a 3-D structure with four
triangular sides. Note that it takes five lines and six angles to tell the story of a
pyramid -- nearly twice the information required to tell the story of a triangle.
For hundreds of years, artists have known some of the tricks that can make a
flat, 2-D painting look like a window into the real, 3-D world. You can see some of
these on a photograph that you might scan and view on your computer monitor:
Objects appear smaller when they're farther away; when objects close to the
camera are in focus, objects farther away are fuzzy; colors tend to be less

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vibrant as they move farther away. When we talk about 3-D graphics on
computers today, though, we're not talking about still photographs -- we're
talking about pictures that move.
If making a 2-D picture into a 3-D image requires adding a lot of information,
then the step from a 3-D still picture to images that move realistically requires
far more. Part of the problem is that weve gotten spoiled. We expect a high
degree of realism in everything we see. In the mid-1970s, a game like "Pong"
could impress people with its on-screen graphics. Today, we compare game
screens to DVD movies, and want the games to be as smooth and detailed as
what we see in the movie theater. That poses a challenge for 3-D graphics on
PCs, Macintoshes, and, increasingly, game consoles like the Dreamcast and the
Play station II.
What Are 3-D Graphics?
For many of us, games on a computer or advanced game system are the most
common ways we see 3-D graphics. These games, or movies made with
computer-generated images, have to go through three major steps to create and
present a realistic 3-D scene:
1. Creating a virtual 3-D world.
2. Determining what part of the world will be shown on the screen.
3. Determining how every pixel on the screen will look so that the whole image
appears as realistic as possible.
Creating a Virtual 3-D World
A virtual 3-D world isn't the same thing as one picture of that world. This is true
of our real world also. Take a very small part of the real world -- your hand and a
desktop under it. Your hand has qualities that determine how it can move and
how it can look. The finger joints bend toward the palm, not away from it. If you
slap your hand on the desktop, the desktop doesn't splash -- it's always solid and
it's always hard. Your hand can't go through the desktop. You can't prove that
these things are true by looking at any single picture. But no matter how many
pictures you take, you will always see that the finger joints bend only toward the
palm, and the desktop is always solid, not liquid, and hard, not soft. That's
because in the real world, this is the way hands are and the way they will always
behave. The objects in a virtual 3-D world, though, dont exist in nature, like your
hand. They are totally synthetic. The only properties they have are given to
them by software. Programmers must use special tools and define a virtual 3-D
world with great care so that everything in it always behaves in a certain way.
What Part of the Virtual World Shows on the Screen?

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At any given moment, the screen shows only a tiny part of the virtual 3-D world
created for a computer game. What is shown on the screen is determined by a
combination of the way the world is defined, where you choose to go and which
way you choose to look. No matter where you go -- forward or backward, up or
down, left or right -- the virtual 3-D world around you determines what you will
see from that position looking in that direction. And what you see has to make
sense from one scene to the next. If you're looking at an object from the same
distance, regardless of direction, it should look the same height. Every object
should look and move in such a way as to convince you that it always has the
same mass, that it's just as hard or soft, as rigid or pliable, and so on.
Programmers who write computer games put enormous effort into defining 3-D
worlds so that you can wander in them without encountering anything that
makes you think, That couldn't happen in this world!" The last thing you want to
see is two solid objects that can go right through each other. Thats a harsh
reminder that everything youre seeing is make-believe.
The third step involves at least as much computing as the other two steps and
has to happen in real time for games and videos. We'll take a longer look at it
next.

How to Make It Look Like the Real Thing

No matter how large or rich the virtual 3-D world, a computer can depict that
world only by putting pixels on the 2-D screen. This section will focus on just how
what you see on the screen is made to look realistic, and especially on how
scenes are made to look as close as possible to what you see in the real world.
First we'll look at how a single stationary object is made to look realistic. Then
we'll answer the same question for an entire scene. Finally, we'll consider what a
computer has to do to show full-motion scenes of realistic images moving at
realistic speeds.
A number of image parts go into making an object seem real. Among the most
important of these are shapes, surface textures, lighting, perspective, depth of
field and anti-aliasing.
Shapes

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The outline of the wireframe can be made to look more natural and
rounded, but many more polygons -- 3,444 -- are required.
HowStuffWorks.com
When we look out our windows, we see scenes made up of all sorts of shapes,
with straight lines and curves in many sizes and combinations. Similarly, when
we look at a 3-D graphical image on our computer monitor, we see images made
up of a variety of shapes, although most of them are made up of straight lines.
We see squares, rectangles, parallelograms, circles and rhomboids, but most of
all we see triangles. However, in order to build images that look as though they
have the smooth curves often found in nature, some of the shapes must be very
small, and a complex image -- say, a human body -- might require thousands of
these shapes to be put together into a structure called a wireframe. At this stage
the structure might be recognizable as the symbol of whatever it will eventually
picture, but the next major step is important: The wireframe has to be given a
surface.
Surface Textures

Adding a surface to the wireframe begins to change the image from

something obviously mathematical to a picture we might recognize as a
hand.
HowStuffWorks.com

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When we meet a surface in the real world, we can get information about it in two
key ways. We can look at it, sometimes from several angles, and we can touch it
to see whether it's hard or soft. In a 3-D graphic image, however, we can only
look at the surface to get all the information possible. All that information breaks
down into three areas:

Color: What color is it? Is it the same color all over?

Texture: Does it appear to be smooth, or does it have lines, bumps, craters

or some other irregularity on the surface?

Reflectance: How much light does it reflect? Are reflections of other items in
the surface sharp or fuzzy?

One way to make an image look "real" is to have a wide variety of these three
features across the different parts of the image. Look around you now: Your
computer keyboard has a different color/texture/reflectance than your desktop,
which has a different color/texture/reflectance than your arm. For realistic color,
its important for the computer to be able to choose from millions of different
colors for the pixels making up an image. Variety in texture comes both from
mathematical models for surfaces ranging from frog skin to Jell-o gelatin to
stored texture maps that are applied to surfaces. We also associate qualities
that we can't see -- soft, hard, warm, cold -- with particular combinations of
color, texture and reflectance. If one of them is wrong, the illusion of reality is
shattered.
Lighting and Perspective
When you walk into a room, you turn on a light. You probably don't spend a lot of
time thinking about the way the light comes from the bulb or tube and spreads
around the room. But the people making 3-D graphics have to think about it,
because all the surfaces surrounding the wireframes have to be lit from
somewhere. One technique, called ray-tracing, plots the path that imaginary
light rays take as they leave the bulb, bounce off of mirrors, walls and other
reflecting surfaces, and finally land on items at different intensities from varying
angles. It's complicated enough when you think about the rays from a single
light bulb, but most rooms have multiple light sources -- several lamps, ceiling
fixtures, windows, candles and so on.
Lighting plays a key role in two effects that give the appearance of weight and
solidity to objects: shading and shadows. The first, shading, takes place when
the light shining on an object is stronger on one side than on the other. This
shading is what makes a ball look round, high cheekbones seem striking and the
folds in a blanket appear deep and soft. These differences in light intensity work

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with shape to reinforce the illusion that an object has depth as well as height and
width. The illusion of weight comes from the second effect -- shadows.
Solid bodies cast shadows when a light shines on them. You can see this when
you observe the shadow that a sundial or a tree casts onto a sidewalk. And
because were used to seeing real objects and people cast shadows, seeing the
shadows in a 3-D image reinforces the illusion that were looking through a
window into the real world, rather than at a screen of mathematically generated
shapes.
Perspective
Perspective is one of those words that sounds technical but that actually
describes a simple effect everyone has seen. If you stand on the side of a long,
straight road and look into the distance, it appears as if the two sides of the road
come together in a point at the horizon. Also, if trees are standing next to the
road, the trees farther away will look smaller than the trees close to you. As a
matter of fact, the trees will look like they are converging on the point formed by
the side of the road. When all of the objects in a scene look like they will
eventually converge at a single point in the distance, that's perspective. There
are variations, but most 3-D graphics use the "single point perspective" just
described.

In the illustration, the hands are separate, but most scenes feature some items
in front of, and partially blocking the view of, other items. For these scenes the
software not only must calculate the relative sizes of the items but also must
know which item is in front and how much of the other items it hides. The most
common technique for calculating these factors is the Z-Buffer. The Z-buffer gets
its name from the common label for the axis, or imaginary line, going from the
screen back through the scene to the horizon. (There are two other common
axes to consider: the x-axis, which measures the scene from side to side, and the
y-axis, which measures the scene from top to bottom.)

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The Z-buffer assigns to each polygon a number based on how close an object
containing the polygon is to the front of the scene. Generally, lower numbers are
assigned to items closer to the screen, and higher numbers are assigned to
items closer to the horizon. For example, a 16-bit Z-buffer would assign the
number -32,768 to an object rendered as close to the screen as possible and
32,767 to an object that is as far away as possible.
In the real world, our eyes cant see objects behind others, so we dont have the
problem of figuring out what we should be seeing. But the computer faces this
problem constantly and solves it in a straightforward way. As each object is
created, its Z-value is compared to that of other objects that occupy the same xand y-values. The object with the lowest z-value is fully rendered, while objects
with higher z-values arent rendered where they intersect. The result ensures
that we dont see background items appearing through the middle of characters
in the foreground. Since the z-buffer is employed before objects are fully
rendered, pieces of the scene that are hidden behind characters or objects dont
have to be rendered at all. This speeds up graphics performance. Next, we'll look
at the depth of field element.

Depth of Field
Another optical effect successfully used to create 3-D is depth of field. Using our
example of the trees beside the road, as that line of trees gets smaller, another
interesting thing happens. If you look at the trees close to you, the trees farther
away will appear to be out of focus. And this is especially true when you're
looking at a photograph or movie of the trees. Film directors and computer
animators use this depth of field effect for two purposes. The first is to reinforce
the illusion of depth in the scene you're watching. It's certainly possible for the
computer to make sure that every item in a scene, no matter how near or far it's
supposed to be, is perfectly in focus. Since we're used to seeing the depth of
field effect, though, having items in focus regardless of distance would seem
foreign and would disturb the illusion of watching a scene in the real world.

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The second reason directors use depth of field is to focus your attention on the
items or actors they feel are most important. To direct your attention to the
heroine of a movie, for example, a director might use a "shallow depth of field,"
where only the actor is in focus. A scene that's designed to impress you with the
grandeur of nature, on the other hand, might use a "deep depth of field" to get
as much as possible in focus and noticeable.
Anti-aliasing
A technique that also relies on fooling the eye is anti-aliasing. Digital graphics
systems are very good at creating lines that go straight up and down the screen,
or straight across. But when curves or diagonal lines show up (and they show up
pretty often in the real world), the computer might produce lines that resemble
stair steps instead of smooth flows. So to fool your eye into seeing a smooth
curve or line, the computer can add graduated shades of the color in the line to
the pixels surrounding the line. These "grayed-out" pixels will fool your eye into
thinking that the jagged stair steps are gone. This process of adding additional
colored pixels to fool the eye is called anti-aliasing, and it is one of the
techniques that separates computer-generated 3-D graphics from those
generated by hand. Keeping up with the lines as they move through fields of
color, and adding the right amount of "anti-jaggy" color, is yet another complex
task that a computer must handle as it creates 3-D animation on your computer
monitor.

The jagged stair steps that occur when images are painted from
pixels in straight lines mark an object as obviously computergenerated.

19

Drawing gray pixels around the lines of an image -- blurring the lines
-- minimizes the stair steps and makes an object appear more realistic.
Realistic Examples
When all the tricks we've talked about so far are put together, scenes of
tremendous realism can be created. And in recent games and films, computergenerated objects are combined with photographic backgrounds to further
heighten the illusion. You can see the amazing results when you compare
photographs and computer-generated scenes.
This is a photograph of a sidewalk near the How Stuff Works office. In one of the
following images, a ball was placed on the sidewalk and photographed. In the
other, an artist used a computer graphics program to create a ball.

Making 3-D Graphics Move

So far, we've been looking at the sorts of things that make any digital image
seem more realistic, whether the image is a single "still" picture or part of an
animated sequence. But during an animated sequence, programmers and
designers will use even more tricks to give the appearance of "live action" rather
than of computer-generated images.
How many frames per second?

20
When you go to see a movie at the local theater, a sequence of images called
frames runs in front of your eyes at a rate of 24 frames per second. Since your
retina will retain an image for a bit longer than 1/24th of a second, most people's
eyes will blend the frames into a single, continuous image of movement and
action.
If you think of this from the other direction, it means that each frame of a motion
picture is a photograph taken at an exposure of 1/24 of a second. That's much
longer than the exposures taken for "stop action" photography, in which runners
and other objects in motion seem frozen in flight. As a result, if you look at a
single frame from a movie about racing, you see that some of the cars are
"blurred" because they moved during the time that the camera shutter was
open. This blurring of things that are moving fast is something that we're used to
seeing, and it's part of what makes an image look real to us when we see it on a
screen.
However, since digital 3-D images are not photographs at all, no blurring occurs
when an object moves during a frame. To make images look more realistic,
blurring has to be explicitly added by programmers. Some designers feel that
"overcoming" this lack of natural blurring requires more than 30 frames per
second, and have pushed their games to display 60 frames per second. While
this allows each individual image to be rendered in great detail, and movements
to be shown in smaller increments, it dramatically increases the number of
frames that must be rendered for a given sequence of action. As an example,
think of a chase that lasts six and one-half minutes. A motion picture would
require 24 (frames per second) x 60 (seconds) x 6.5 (minutes) or 9,360 frames
for the chase. A digital 3-D image at 60 frames per second would require 60 x 60
x 6.5, or 23,400 frames for the same length of time.
Creative Blurring
The blurring that programmers add to boost realism in a moving image is called
"motion blur" or "spatial anti-aliasing." If you've ever turned on the "mouse
trails" feature of Windows, you've used a very crude version of a portion of this
technique. Copies of the moving object are left behind in its wake, with the
copies growing ever less distinct and intense as the object moves farther away.
The length of the trail of the object, how quickly the copies fade away and other
details will vary depending on exactly how fast the object is supposed to be
moving, how close to the viewer it is, and the extent to which it is the focus of
attention. As you can see, there are a lot of decisions to be made and many
details to be programmed in making an object appear to move realistically.
There are other parts of an image where the precise rendering of a computer
must be sacrificed for the sake of realism. This applies both to still and moving
images. Reflections are a good example. You've seen the images of chrome-

21
surfaced cars and spaceships perfectly reflecting everything in the scene. While
the chrome-covered images are tremendous demonstrations of ray-tracing, most
of us don't live in chrome-plated worlds. Wooden furniture, marble floors and
polished metal all reflect images, though not as perfectly as a smooth mirror.
The reflections in these surfaces must be blurred -- with each surface receiving a
different blur -- so that the surfaces surrounding the central players in a digital
drama provide a realistic stage for the action.
Fluid Motion for Us Is Hard Work for the Computer
All the factors we've discussed so far add complexity to the process of putting a
3-D image on the screen. It's harder to define and create the object in the first
place, and it's harder to render it by generating all the pixels needed to display
the image. The triangles and polygons of the wireframe, the texture of the
surface, and the rays of light coming from various light sources and reflecting
from multiple surfaces must all be calculated and assembled before the software
begins to tell the computer how to paint the pixels on the screen. You might
think that the hard work of computing would be over when the painting begins,
but it's at the painting, or rendering, level that the numbers begin to add up.
Today, a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 defines the lowest point of "highresolution." That means that there are 786,432 picture elements, or pixels, to be
painted on the screen. If there are 32 bits of color available, multiplying by 32
shows that 25,165,824 bits have to be dealt with to make a single image. Moving
at a rate of 60 frames per second demands that the computer handle
1,509,949,440 bits of information every second just to put the image onto the
screen. And this is completely separate from the work the computer has to do to
decide about the content, colors, shapes, lighting and everything else about the
image so that the pixels put on the screen actually show the right image. When
you think about all the processing that has to happen just to get the image
painted, it's easy to understand why graphics display boards are moving more
and more of the graphics processing away from the computer's central
processing unit (CPU). The CPU needs all the help it can get.

Transforms and Processors: Work, Work, Work

Looking at the number of information bits that go into the makeup of a screen
only gives a partial picture of how much processing is involved. To get some

22
inkling of the total processing load, we have to talk about a mathematical
process called a transform. Transforms are used whenever we change the way
we look at something. A picture of a car that moves toward us, for example, uses
transforms to make the car appear larger as it moves. Another example of a
transform is when the 3-D world created by a computer program has to be
"flattened" into 2-D for display on a screen. Let's look at the math involved with
this transform -- one that's used in every frame of a 3-D game -- to get an idea of
what the computer is doing. We'll use some numbers that are made up but that
give an idea of the staggering amount of mathematics involved in generating
one screen. Don't worry about learning to do the math. That has become the
computer's problem. This is all intended to give you some appreciation for the
heavy-lifting your computer does when you run a game.
The first part of the process has several important variables:

X = 758 -- the height of the "world" we're looking at.

Y = 1024 -- the width of the world we're looking at

Z = 2 -- the depth (front to back) of the world we're looking at

Sx = height of our window into the world

Sy - width of our window into the world

Sz = a depth variable that determines which objects are visible in front of

other, hidden objects

D = .75 -- the distance between our eye and the window in this imaginary
world.

First, we calculate the size of the windows into the imaginary world.
Now that the window size has been calculated, a perspective transform is used
to move a step closer to projecting the world onto a monitor screen. In this next
step, we add some more variables.

23

So, a point (X, Y, Z, 1.0) in the three-dimensional imaginary world would have
transformed position of (X', Y', Z', W'), which we get by the following equations:

At this point, another transform must be applied before the image can be
projected onto the monitor's screen, but you begin to see the level of
computation involved -- and this is all for a single vector (line) in the image!
Imagine the calculations in a complex scene with many objects and characters,
and imagine doing all this 60 times a second. Aren't you glad someone invented
computers?
In the example below, you see an animated sequence showing a walk through
the new How Stuff Works office. First, notice that this sequence is much simpler
than most scenes in a 3-D game. There are no opponents jumping out from
behind desks, no missiles or spears sailing through the air, no tooth-gnashing
demons materializing in cubicles. From the "what's-going-to-be-in-the-scene"
point of view, this is simple animation. Even this simple sequence, though, deals
with many of the issues we've seen so far. The walls and furniture have texture
that covers wireframe structures. Rays representing lighting provide the basis for
shadows. Also, as the point of view changes during the walk through the office,
notice how some objects become visible around corners and appear from behind
walls -- you're seeing the effects of the z-buffer calculations. As all of these
elements come into play before the image can actually be rendered onto the
monitor, it's pretty obvious that even a powerful modern CPU can use some help

24
doing all the processing required for 3-D games and graphics. That's where
graphics co-processor boards come in.
How Graphics Boards Help
Since the early days of personal computers, most graphics boards have been
translators, taking the fully developed image created by the computer's CPU and
translating it into the electrical impulses required to drive the
computer's monitor. This approach works, but all of the processing for the image
is done by the CPU -- along with all the processing for the sound, player input
(for games) and the interrupts for the system. Because of everything the
computer must do to make modern 3-D games and multi-media presentations
happen, it's easy for even the fastest modern processors to become overworked
and unable to serve the various requirements of the software in real time. It's
here that the graphics co-processor helps: it splits the work with the CPU so that
the total multi-media experience can move at an acceptable speed.
As we've seen, the first step in building a 3-D digital image is creating a
wireframe world of triangles and polygons. The wireframe world is then
transformed from the three-dimensional mathematical world into a set of
patterns that will display on a 2-D screen. The transformed image is then
covered with surfaces, or rendered, lit from some number of sources, and finally
translated into the patterns that display on a monitor's screen. The most
common graphics co-processors in the current generation of graphics display
boards, however, take the task of rendering away from the CPU after the
wireframe has been created and transformed into a 2-D set of polygons. The
graphics co-processor found in boards like the VooDoo3 and TNT2 Ultra takes
over from the CPU at this stage. This is an important step, but graphics
processors on the cutting edge of technology are designed to relieve the CPU at
even earlier points in the process.
One approach to taking more responsibility from the CPU is done by the GeForce
256 from Nvidia. In addition to the rendering done by earlier-generation boards,
the GeForce 256 adds transforming the wireframe models from 3-D mathematics
space to 2-D display space as well as the work needed to show lighting. Since
both transforms and ray-tracing involve serious floating point mathematics
(mathematics that involve fractions, called "floating point" because the decimal
point can move as needed to provide high precision), these tasks take a serious
processing burden from the CPU. And because the graphics processor doesn't
have to cope with many of the tasks expected of the CPU, it can be designed to
do those mathematical tasks very quickly.
The new Voodoo 5 from 3dfx takes over another set of tasks from the CPU. 3dfx
calls the technology the T-buffer. This technology focuses on improving the
rendering process rather than adding additional tasks to the processor. The T-

25
buffer is designed to improve anti-aliasing by rendering up to four copies of the
same image, each slightly offset from the others, then combining them to
slightly blur the edges of objects and defeat the "jaggies" that can plague
computer-generated images. The same technique is used to generate motionblur, blurred shadows and depth-of-field focus blurring. All of these produce
smoother-looking, more realistic images that graphics designers want. The
object of the Voodoo 5 design is to do full-screen anti-aliasing while still
maintaining fast frame rates.
Computer graphics still have a ways to go before we see routine, constant
generation and presentation of truly realistic moving images. But graphics have
advanced tremendously since the days of 80 columns and 25 lines of
monochrome text. The result is that millions of people enjoy games and
simulations with today's technology. And new 3-D processors will come much
closer to making us feel we're really exploring other worlds and experiencing
things we'd never dare try in real life. Major advances in PC graphics hardware
seem to happen about every six months. Software improves more slowly. It's still
clear that, like the Internet, computer graphics are going to become an
increasingly attractive alternative to TV.