andreess@mrlaxa.mrl.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen) (04/28/91)
I don't have access to a VGX at the moment, but I'm very curious as to how the hardware texture/surface/image-mapping works. I understand it's done with the extra bitplanes; how does that work? Can it be fed arbitrary images? I saw an SGI demo videotape way back when, with a VW Bug 'reflecting' its environment (which wasn't actually being rendered); the SGI rep called this (I think) environment mapping. How does that work? As if that weren't enough: What additions have been made to the pipeline and GL to handle all this? What's the performance penalty? And finally, given that this (as well as, I understand, atmospheric effects) is now supported in hardware, what's left to be implemented within the GL paradigm? Marc -- Marc Andreessen___________University of Illinois Materials Research Laboratory Internet: andreessen@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu____________Bitnet: andreessen@uiucmrl