Since the earliest games of Ping Pong and Pac man, graphics have evolved quite a bit. The technology in which to render them has also evolved into complex and speedy graphics processing units. From primitive software acceleration to the current hardware and software acceleration, graphics have become more efficient, more complex, and most importantly, more beautiful than ever before.
Bilinear, Trilinear, and MIP Mapping Technologies Explained
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Describes techniques at a very basic level (can’t vouch for the correctness of the explanation), but doesn’t give any motivation. In fact, it doesn’t even explain mathematically what trilinear filtering is, as it does with bilinear filtering.
Overall, not worth a post on osnews.com, I don’t think.
This article didn’t explain anything! It was just a guy having fun with MS Paint.
Did anyone happen to follow the link (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml) to the Unreal 3 engine graphics? Holy crap.
Normal mapping. It’s the next “big thing” after bump mapping.
Dang, this is a stupid article. The author comes off as knowing a litle bit, and bluffing on the rest.
These filtering methods have been around for many years, and are certainly one of the least exiting things today’s video cards can do.
Trilinear filtering is basically bilinear filtering in 3 dimensions, not souped-up bilinear.
Editors, at least read the article, please?
He even got mipmapping wrong! It’s an optimisation technique first and foremost, which /can/ be used to increase percieved texture quality at a distance – but that’s not its goal, more a side-effect.
(see: Quake)
I want those 5 minutes of my life back. Most worthless article I’ve ever read that was posted on OSNews.
comparing doom with doom 3, is like comparing a transistor to a full blown computer. anyone who is a little familiar with 3d graphics can tell you doom 1 and 2 weren’t even 3d games at all!
is anisotropic. Few games uses this but the article should give a brief introduction.
Yea, it’s AWESOME…
Check out a tech Demo actually running the UE3 engine demoed on the new GeForceFX 6800… VERY VERY awesome
http://home.online.no/~sanbjoe/nv40/unreal3_0002.wmv
Badly written, really bad example images and a total failure to understand how 3D graphics work, and that Doom I and II were really 2D games with a simple column-ray caster and vertical tmapper.
Most of the osnews articles are pretty good, but I have no idea how this slipped in. There are already at least a dozen high-profile articles covering these topics (correctly at that) made over the last 1-2 years.
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” — Mark Twain
Another vote for “what in hell is this guy thinking?”
He obviously knows nothing about filtering or mip-mapping so why is he writing an article “explaining” it? How could he possibly talk about tri-linear filtering without speaking of mip-mapping first, anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right, he’s got no idea of what mip-mapping is, that’s why.
And the contrast of the Doom/Doom3 screens has nothing at all to do with filtering or mip-mapping anyway!
*sigh*
FYI: For a much better explanation of these techniques, just crack open the OpenGL red book. The chapter is called “Texture Mapping”.
I think he used the DOOM/DOOM3 shots not to show grfx techniques but rather show how far grfx have come. But yes, very poorly written imho too (And I try not be critical of peoples work), but it is not news worthy one bit.
WOW! Those screenshots are just amazing. I just bought Doom3 and Unreal3 looks like it completely spanks it.
Basically, while various forms of bump mapping use shadowing to indicate small detail, virtual displacement mapping (VDM) seems to stretch and squash parts of textures to give the illusion that there are things you can see on one side that you can’t see on another.
As an example imagine a brick texture that shows all four edges. With VDM, if you look at it from the bottom left, you’ll see the front of the brick and the bottom and right edges, but not the top and left part (as these will have been squashed to nothing).
It lets people simulate incredible levels of depth and detail, look at the demo for more.