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<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"></head><body><div class="page">
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<h1>20070713 - Micro Imposters</h1>
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<br>
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<i>Micro What?</i>
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<br>
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<br>
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Lets first take a trip back to a time before polygons, to the late 80s, to a video game that I just could not sink enough coins into,
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Sega's <a href="http://emustatus.rainemu.com/games/gforce2.htm">Galaxy Force II</a>.
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This video game used custom hardware (running at 12.5Mhz) that could draw a huge number of rotated and scaled billboards with on/off transparency.
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It was state of the art in the 80s and produced stunning 3D graphics at the time.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-A.png">
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<img src="20070713-B.png"><br><br>
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<img src="20070713-C.png">
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<img src="20070713-D.png">
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</center>
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<br>
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However the reign of billboard or impostor based graphics came quickly to an end with the polygon based video games which hit arcades in the early 90s.
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But what if these ideas had not died? Fast forward 20 years later.
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Atom is built on a concept similar to the 3D graphics of the late 80s, except taken to the extreme with modern hardware.
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Instead of a surface/vertex/polygon based pipeline, Atom has a solids based pipeline that uses micro impostors or lots and lots of billboards.
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<br>
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<br>
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Lets strip the clothes off the Atom Graphics Engine and see what is underneath.
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Taking a step back, viewing an example world from a distance, but rendering only with flat billboards (no cool graphics), the micro impostor structure shows through.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-E.jpg">
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</center>
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<br>
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As you move more inside the world, the engine automatically expands and renders more detail, seamlessly subdividing into smaller and smaller micro impostors.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-F.jpg">
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</center>
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<br>
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The world is fully solid and procedural, so you can just keep on going deeper inside anything.
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Atom has a state of the art custom hidden surface removal algorithm which automatically expands and renders only the surfaces of the solid objects which you can see at any given time.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-G.jpg">
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</center>
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<br>
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Even at the smallest level, which is a fraction of a pixel of the size of the previous image, Atom still is able to render a fully detailed image.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-H.jpg">
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</center>
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<br>
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With the skin back on, Atom can render stunning graphics in real-time.
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<br>
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<br>
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<center>
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<img src="20070713-I.jpg">
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</center>
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<br>
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</div></body></html>
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@@ -91,6 +91,7 @@ Below this is active random migration (456 prior posts still to filter through)
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<a href="20090422.html">20090422 - WFA Image Compression</a><br>
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<br>
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<b>2007</b><br>
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<a href="20070713.html">20070713 - Micro Imposters</a><br>
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<a href="20070712.html">20070712 - Fragment Raytracer</a><br>
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<a href="20070711.html">20070711 - Infinite Level of Detail</a><br>
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<a href="20070710.html">20070710 - Graphics Engine Introduction</a><br>
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