Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10.36. Division of labor between our code and the graphics API
hardware is standardized, the layer can be significantly leaner. A notable
example of this was the PlayStation 2, which allowed programmers direct
access to hardware registers and very low level control over direct memory
access (DMA). Figure 10.36 illustrates the division of labor involved in this
cooperation.
A slightly different summary of the real-time graphics pipeline is illus-
trated in Figure 10.37, this time focusing more on the lower end of the
pipeline and the conceptual flow of data. The blue boxes represent data
that we provide, and blue ovals are our shaders that we write. The yellow
ovals are operations that are performed by the API.
The remainder of this chapter discusses a number of various topics in
computer graphics. We proceed roughly in the order that these topics are
encountered in the graphics pipeline.
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