Graphics terms

[Insectoid]

I was just wondering, what do all those terms im the graphics menus in games mean?

wondering definitions of:

-Gamma
-trilinear/biliniear/etc.
-other tings that somehow I can't remember at the moment

[Vermette]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilinear_filtering
etc...

[Dan]

Gamma is basicly contrast. How much contrast there are between the diffrent shades of color, most noticable in gray tones. At a high contrast there will be few gray tones and mustly it will be black and white at low constrast there will be many tones but hard to tell the diffrence between them so it might look all black.

Trilinear and billiniear have to do with textures and are types of texture filtering. They are diffrent methods for aplying a 2d texture to a 3d model. Basicly some methods are faster but look crapy and some are slow but look good, more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_filtering

Another common one is anti-aliasing. aliasing is what happens when you have a high rez image and display it at a low rez, it makes things look pixelated and lines look jagged. ant-aliasing the process of fixing this threw one of many methods. Noramly you have options realting to what method or how many times to go over the image to try and hide aliasing. This somtimes can have the side effect of making things look softer and blurier and less sharp. The more passes the slower things go but the better things look. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

Almost all graphics settings in games are trade offs between running fast and looking good. The better things look the longer they take to render and the more you lag.

[andrew.]

To me, gamma looks like a combination of both brightness and contrast. If you go into your graphics settings and turn up gamma, it brightens and contrasts the colours.

Like Tony said, bilinear and trilinear are texture filters used to apply a 2D texture to a 3D object. If your computer is fairly decent, you should be able to use anisotropic filtering, which is a lot better than bilinear or trilinear.

Tony hit the nail on the head with anti-aliasing.

[Clayton]

That would be Dan, and not Tony andrew.

[Insectoid]

I figured that Gamma 'corrects' the brightness, as you lose contrast as you increase brightness. Dunno if that's what it does, but experimenting has yielded these results.

[Dan]

For much more accurit detials on gamma then what i side you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction


P.S. I am used to being called tony by now. Not sure why it happens so much, maybe it's becues our avatars are the same style and we are both admins.

[andrew.]

Clayton @ Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:50 am wrote:

That would be Dan, and not Tony andrew.

Oops. My bad, I misinterpreted Dan's avatar as yours.