New answers tagged graphics
23
In Windows up to version 3.x included (and early versions of OS/2), the only interface available for graphics was the Graphics Device Interface. This defines a large number of 2D graphics primitives, from simple line-drawing to font rendering. Graphics drivers implemented the GDI Device Driver Interface, with primitives matching the GDI primitives; this was ...
6
From Rodrigo Copetti’s analysis,
The RDP relies on 4 KB of TMEM (Texture memory) as a single source to load textures. Unfortunately, in practice 4 KB happened to be insufficient for high-resolution textures.
Furthermore, if mipmapping is used, the available amount of memory is then reduced to half.
As a result, some games used solid colours with Gouraud ...
25
What did old-style GPUs actually do?
As so often, when it comes to early 3D, Fabian Sangland's website is a good source. Here for example an article about 3dfx' Voodoo 1/2 cards: The Story of the 3DFX Voodoo 1
Linke mentioned in comments, best way to get an idea about what are the steps that can be moved between units is looking at OpenGL. In general, the ...
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Having owned a Voodoo 1 back in the day, it did pixel painting only, and was slightly buggy in that.
The CPU's job was to transform, clip and project all geometry, and to have transferred any necessary textures to the GPU at some point. Vertex attributes were then supplied to the GPU for rendering — screen location and depth, texture coordinates and colour. ...
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