3DLABS Oxygen RPM - Manual (Page 30)

Terms and Definitions
22 3Dlabs Oxygen RPM User’s Guide
Transparency: A function that refers to the rendering of transparent (non-
opaque) objects. Transparency is generally accomplished on a polygon rendering
system using either screen-door transparency (stipple masking) or alpha blending.
Trilinear Sampling: A process whereby texture mapping is done through filtering
a group of texels sampled from the texel buffer in 3 dimensions. This technique is
commonly used to sample texels from MIP-maps.
True Color: Graphics mode with approximately 16.8 million colors (24 or 32 bits
per pixel) where full color information is saved for each pixel.
Vblank: The interval during which the screen is blanked so as to conceal the
retrace line as the CRT guns reset from the lower right corner of the screen to the
upper left corner. Since the CRT is blank during this interval, the front and back
buffers are swapped at this time.
Vectors/second: Lines drawn per second.
VGA: Video Graphics Array. VGA runs at resolutions up to and including 640 x
480.
VHR: Very High Resolution. VHR runs at a resolution of 1,280 x 1,024.
VRAM: Video Random Access Memory is an expensive, fast type of RAM that
is used as display memory on high-end graphics boards.
VRML: Virtual Reality Modeling Language.
Z-Buffer: The z-buffer is the part of the frame buffer that stores the depth value
(z-axis) for each pixel. It facilitates hidden-surface removal by comparing the z
value of the pixel to be written to that of the existing pixel, and allowing or not
allowing the pixel to be overwritten depending upon this comparison.