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Ray tracing mimics the reflection and refraction of light rays in a 3D scene to produce image detail surpassing anything possible using Phong shading. Effective as it is, though, ray tracing by itself will not produce photo-realistic images. At the very minimum, some kind of ambient lighting must be applied to the scene to reduce … Read more
Most silicon chips are made of single crystal silicon, which has a very low resistance to electron flow. However, silicon can exist in different forms (just as carbon can exist in the form of diamond, graphite, soot and buckminsterfullerine). As well as single crystal silicon, other forms are Poly-silicon and Amorphous silicon. Polysilicon (p-si) is … Read more
MIP-maps are used to store several different copies of a texture, at different scales, for use in 3D scene rendering. One of the accompanying illustrations shows four versions of a texture applied to flat surfaces which were parallel to the screen, each surface covered by a single, unprocessed, copy of one of the textures stored … Read more
In the search for a large sized flat screen display technology, LCDs do not have the field all to themselves. Though late to join the commercial battle, the next flat large screen devices being commercialised are plasma display panels (PDPs), a technology developed from the principle of the fluorescent (or “strip”) light. In a fluorescent … Read more
A hybrid of the LCD and a PDP: the Plasma Addressed Liquid Crystal (PALC) display. The main drawback to the use of the TFT is that, as with any semiconductor process, manufacturing of large sized chips on displays is extremely difficult. If a substitute for the TFT could be found that can be made in … Read more
In light emitting diodes (LEDs) based on inorganic light emitting materials, some of the photons released by the inorganic materials are also reabsorbed by them. In organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), which produce light using the same electron/hole recombination method as LEDs, the frequencies of light absorbed by the light emitting materials lie mostly outside … Read more
While Hitachi was developing its In-Plane Switching (IPS) Super TFT, Fujitsu and the chemical giant Merck were taking a different approach to increasing viewing angles and, in 1996, announced the development of a new liquid crystal mode, known as Vertical Alignment (VA). In VA, as the name suggests, the molecules of liquid crystal are normally … Read more
The Foxconn story continues to reverberate. I have been collecting articles and opinions on the topic with the intention of writing a longer piece, but now seems the time to comment. This week, Foxconn said that it would move away from the ‘factory town’ concept and delegate back to government the issues of housing and … Read more
As so often in the display business, Samsung has been the topic of much discussion this week. The company is clearly being attacked in the TV market by Sony, which is looking to recover some of the market share losses that it has made in recent years. Sony, which radically restructured its European business model … Read more
The word “moiré” comes from the French word for mohair and is defined as “having a watered or wavelike pattern” (Collins English Dictionary). Moiré patterns can occur whenever similar, regular patterns are superimposed on each other and are offset or angled with respect to one another. They are commonly seen amongst the folds of net … Read more
“MIP map” is the name given to a collection of images to be used as surface textures when building, or rendering, a 2D representation of a 3D scene. The acronym “MIP” comes from the Latin phrase: multum in parvo which is translated as “many things in a small place”. Each of the many images stored … Read more
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are now so common that we take it for granted that people know what we are talking about when we use the phrase. But how many of us know what liquid crystals are? The term itself seems to be a contradiction. Crystals, such as quartz, are formed when molecules form a … Read more
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