Let's take a look at the definition of computer graphics:
Computer graphics: a discipline that studies the principles, methods and techniques of how to use computers to display, generate, and process graphics.
This definition comes from IEEE: Computer graphics is the art or science of producing graphical images with the aid of computer.
The development history of graphics
The first stage: the stage of establishing discipline status
- The earliest computers, such as ENIAC, electronic digital integral computer, did not have a special display device, and used the light bulb to represent 1 and 0.
- In 1950, the first graphic display was born as an accessory to the MIT Cyclone 1 computer.
Its appearance has built a bridge between graphic display and computer technology. - In the late 1950s, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory developed a semi-automatic ground air defense system, or SAGE for short, for the North American Air Defense Command on Cyclone 1. The SAGE system converts radar signals into graphics on the display. The operator can use a "light pen" to select target graphics on the screen. This is the earliest interactive graphics system. It marks the beginning of "passive graphics" towards "interactive graphics".
- In 1962, Ivan Sutherland of MIT Lincoln Laboratory published a doctoral dissertation entitled "Sketchpad: A Man-machine Graphical Communication System" (Sketchpad: a graphics system for human-machine interactive communication). In this paper, "Computer Graphics" was proposed for the first time, laying the disciplinary foundation of computer graphics.
The second stage: the maturity of raster graphics
- The basis of raster graphics: raster scanning graphics display, this device is a dot-drawing device, can be regarded as a dot matrix unit generator, can control the brightness of each dot matrix unit.
- The basic content of raster graphics: basic graphics concepts and algorithms such as original image generation, area filling, cropping, anti-aliasing, and blanking have been born.
- ACM established a special interest group on computer graphics and interactive technology.
- Graphics software standardization: ACM established the Graphics Standardization Committee to develop CGS (Core Graphics System).
- The budding of photorealistic graphics.
The third stage: Realistic graphics
- Graphics standards: OpenGL and DirectX
- The appearance of GPU provides powerful support for graphics computing.
- illumination
- Rendering
- Pursue real-time rendering
Typical graphics application
- Computer Aided Design
- Virtual reality environment
- Scientific Computing Visualization
- film
- game
The relationship between computer graphics, computer vision and digital image processing
