GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics

Part III. Materials

 

My professional involvement in hardware-accelerated computer graphics began 15 years ago, and I am keenly aware of where our industry came from and how far we’ve evolved. In 1988, most workstation users would have considered themselves extremely fortunate to have a system with a hardware-accelerated z-buffer, not to mention something that supported even the most primitive form of lighting. On the other hand, once texture mapping and Phong lighting hardware acceleration appeared a couple of years later, what followed was more of an evolution in cost reduction and large-scale integration, not a functional revolution. In fact, ...