On Friday 29 August 2003 13:33, Alexander Maryanovsky wrote: > >they map each window as a texture map over > >a rectangular 3D object using the graphic's hardware 3D acceleration mode. > > I have a (perhaps offtopic, but I changed the topic :-)) question - why is > it that hardware acceleration for 3D operations so much better than for 2D > operations (which are presumably easier). Seeing as 2D graphics is needed > much more often than 3D, has been needed for much longer and is probably > much easier to implement, I'd expect 2D to have the faster stuff. The above > description implies that QuartzExtreme is "cheating" by using 3D operations > for tasks that are essentially 2D. Why is the situation like this? To > support all those First Person Shooters?
a lot of thought and effort has been put into 3D just because it is considered hard while being in high demand. 2D has been very easy for as long as you had decent processors and like Nadav noted - you can do everything that is important in software and be fast enough: you're only limited by the graphic bandwidth, which have been constantly pushed upwards by the 3D advances. So 3D oriented improvments have also benefited 2D. -- Oded ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
