Hey there, folks. In today’s issue, we’re going to have a look at a few terms and phrases specifically related to graphics and graphics cards. Naturally, we don’t have enough space to cover all of them in one article, so this is probably something we’re going to be revisiting at a later date.

Ambient Occlusion: You’ve probably heard a few people discussing Ambient Occlusion- or, at the very least, seen the option for it in your Graphics Card settings. The question is..what is it, exactly? Basically, it’s a method by which a processor approximates the amount of light that should be shining on an object, the angles that light should be shining, and how it reflects off the object’s surface. It’s generally used for environmental lighting.

Anistropic Filtering: Antistropic Filtering improves texture quality by increasing sharpness, generally in textures viewed at odd angles and at a distance. But how does it do this? Older versions had an algorithm that determined each image’s shape and angle based on an algorithm that took into account all the MIP maps of that image (essentially, a sequence of progressively smaller copies of that image). More advanced forms, however, calculate it on a pixel-by-pixel basis.

Antialiasing: Anti-Aliasing smoothes jagged curves and edges in an image- essentially, it ‘fools’ the eye into believing that a jagged edge displayed on screen is actually quite smooth. The higher the level of antialiasing, the more convincing the illusion becomes. It does this by faintly blurring the the  pixels on the edge of textures. Newer computer screens don’t suffer from jagged edges as much as older ones, but antialiasing’s still a useful tool.

Double/Triple Buffering: To understand buffering, you must first know what a buffer is- it’s essentially a portion of the computer’s active memory that’s designed to hold data while it’s being processed. Now, with that in mind, buffering in the context of graphics cards involves graphical data being held before it’s displayed to your computer screen- each buffer holds  segment of data while they’re being written, and then displays them when the writing is complete.

The reason this is necessary is that in order to display graphical images to a computer, the system has to ‘redraw’ the frames a number of times per second- the going refresh rate is often sixty, but may be either higher or lower. If a completed image isn’t already stored in a buffer, ready to be displayed instantly, users may well experience flickering as the image is ‘updated’. That’s where buffering comes in- it holds completed images to display immediately after one another.

Double buffering involves the use of two buffers, Triple buffering involves the use of three. Wikipedia actually has a rather excellent analogy for explaining the process involving a pool and buckets of water- it’s more efficient to fill a pool with two buckets of water than it is with one, as you can leave one bucket filling while you take the second to the pool. Using a second person to carry the buckets would essentially personify triple buffering.

Framerate/Refresh Rate: Basically, this is the number of ‘frames’ or ‘images’ your game’s displaying each second. Pretty simple, right?

Vertical Sync: Occasionally, a game’s framerate can cause trouble for a monitor- for whatever reason, it’s unable to display all the frames properly or correctly, so some of them end up having bugs such as graphical tearing. V-sync forces the game to only display as many frames per second as the monitor can handle, reducing any screen tearing experienced by the user.

Image Credits: Nvidia

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