Importance

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Abstract

A graphics system includes a graphics controller for rendering polygons with texture using an improved MIP mapping technique. The graphics controller includes a polygon engine for rendering the pixels in a polygon and a texture map engine for selecting texture elements ('texels') from an appropriate texture map to be applied to the pixels rendered by the polygon engine. The texture map engine generates texel coordinate values from pixel coordinate values provided by the polygon engine. The appropriate texture map is selected from a set of texture maps each varying from the others by the level of detail of the texture in each map. The graphics controller selects the appropriate level of detail texture map to use to increase speed, efficiency, and realism quality of the graphics system. The determination as to which level of detail texture map is appropriate is made by computing the area bounded by adjacent texel coordinates generated by the texture map engine. In one embodiment, vectors are defined for each the adjacent texels and the area is determined from the magnitude of the cross product of the vectors. An embodiment of the invention includes software for calculating the area bounded by adjacent texel coordinates and for comparing the area to a range of values. The software also selects an appropriate texture map based on the results of the comparison.

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First Claim