

Ask HN: What still remains to be solved in terms of Graphics Programming? - z3phyr

I was watching the Brigade3 Engine real time demo and it blew me away. Real time path tracing (working) has been implemented. It was my dream to be a part of its development. What still remains to be solved in terms of Graphics Programming?
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techdog
Rapid interconversion between vector and bitmap formats remains hard.

Rapid fractal compression remains hard. Some of Barnsley's techniques should
be off patent now, or soon.

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lutusp
> Rapid interconversion between vector and bitmap formats remains hard.

More important, if you abandon the vector form in favor of a bitmap, there's
no going back -- information is irretrievably lost.

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lutusp
> What still remains to be solved in terms of Graphics Programming?

That's not a particularly useful question, because the direction of graphics
programming is steered more by improvements in hardware than software. For
example, I can remember writing and publishing a game for a programmable
calculator, at a time when a "display" was a sheet of graph paper:

[http://www.arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html...](http://www.arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html#HP_25)

My point is that I've personally witnessed huge changes in what people regard
as cutting edge computer graphics, and most of the change is driven by
hardware improvements -- GPUs, faster and cheaper computer power, display
technology.

So to answer your question, I would advise that you pay attention to the
hardware responsible for processing and displaying the images.

