Background. Lower-level graphics programming interfaces such as Direct3D 12 re-quire synchronization and data hazards between dependent workloads to be resolvedmanually. A barrier is a primitive used to resolve synchronization and data hazardsin a manner to achieve correct behavior by allowing developers to define waits be-tween workloads. However, due to its coarse-grained interface, workloads may beredundantly blocked, and data hazards resolved conservatively leading to excessiveGPU cache flushes even with correct usage. Objectives. To evaluate if the novel and more fine-grained enhanced barriers APIin Direct3D 12 can provide any improvements over Direct3D 12 resource (legacy)barriers in AMD FidelityFX applications using Direct3D 12. Methods. An experiment as a research method was carried out to investigate theeffects of enhanced barriers in existing Direct3D 12 applications. Frame time and thenumber of GPU cache flushes and invalidations occurring per frame were the primarymetrics measured. This was carried out by replacing legacy barriers with enhancedbarriers in three of AMD’s open-source, state-of-the-art image quality toolkits; Fideli-tyFX Super Resolution (FSR), FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR2), and Stochas-tic Screen Space Reflections (SSSR). Results. The use of enhanced barriers in FSR, FSR2, and SSSR showed that nosignificant differences were found in terms of frame time and the number of cacheflushes and invalidations occurring within a frame when compared to using resourcebarriers. Configurations of enhanced barriers that may reduce pipeline stall times re-main theoretical and could not be verified due to minuscule differences. These includecompute-only workload synchronization and non-blocking barrier layout transitions. Conclusions. Replacing legacy barriers with enhanced barriers in FSR, FSR2, andSSSR proved to be feasible, but lacks performance benefits for it to be desirable.However, the use of barriers can vary depending on the application, therefore, differ-ent results can arise given other synchronization scenarios. For existing Direct3D 12applications using resource barriers, it may be advisable to not upgrade to enhancedbarriers. / Bakgrund. Grafikprogrammeringsgränssnitt på lägre nivå, som till exempel Di-rect3D 12, kräver att synkronisering och datahinder mellan beroende arbetsbelast-ningar löses manuellt. En barriär är en primitiv som används för att lösa synkroniser-ing och datahinder som tillåter korrekt beteende genom att låta utvecklare definieraväntetider mellan arbeten. Men på grund av sitt högnivå-gränssnitt kan arbetsbelast-ningar onödigt blockeras och datahinder löses konservativt med överdrivet mycketGPU-cache-flushningar även vid korrekt användning. Syfte. För att utvärdera om det nya och mer detaljerade enhanced barriers API iDirect3D 12 kan ge några förbättringar jämfört med Direct3D 12 Resource (Legacy)Barriers i AMD FidelityFX-applikationer som använder Direct3D 12. Metod. Ett experiment som en forskningsmetod genomfördes för att undersöka ef-fekterna av enhanced barriers i befintliga Direct3D 12-applikationer. Bildtid och an-talet GPU-cache-flushar och ogiltigförklaringar som inträffar per bild var de primäramätvärdena. Detta genomfördes genom att ersätta legacy barriers med enhanced bar-riers i tre av AMD:s öppen källkodsbaserade verktyg för bildkvalitet; FidelityFX Su-per Resolution (FSR), FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR2) och Stochastic ScreenSpace Reflections (SSSR). Resultat. Användningen av enhanced barriers i FSR, FSR2 och SSSR visade attinga betydande skillnader kunde hittas när det gäller bildtid och antalet cache-flusharoch ogiltigförklaringar som inträffar inom en bild jämfört med användning av resourcebarriers. Konfigurationer av enhanced barrier som kan minska pipeline-stopp tiderförblir teoretiska och kunde inte verifieras på grund av minimala skillnader. Dessainkluderar synkronisering av endast compute-shader arbete och icke-blockerandeövergångar av barriär-layout. Slutsatser. Att ersätta legacy barriers med enhanced barriers i FSR, FSR2 ochSSSR visade sig vara genomförbart, men saknar prestandafördelar för att vara ön-skvärt. Dock kan användningen av barriärer variera beroende på applikationen, ochdärför kan olika resultat uppstå med olika synkroniseringsscenarier. För befintligaDirect3D 12-applikationer som använder resursbarriärer kan det vara lämpligt attinte uppgradera till förbättrade barriärer.

Traditionally direct 3D interaction has always been limited to true 3D devices whereas 2D devices have always been used to achieve indirect 3D interaction. Till date no proper research has been done to try and extend the use of mouse to direct 3D interaction. In this research we explore the issues involved with using the mouse to accommodate the additional degrees of freedom required for 3D interaction. We put forth a unique and innovative design to achieve this objective and show that even a device as simple as the mouse can be highly effective for 3D interaction when supported by an appropriate underlying design. We also discuss in detail a software prototype "Direct3D" that we have developed based on our design and hope to take a step towards making direct 3D interaction easy, inexpensive and available to all computer users.

Context. Computer rendered imagery such as computer games is a field with steady development. To render games an application programming interface (API) is used to communicate with a graphical processing unit (GPU). Both the interfaces and processing units are a part of the steady development in order to be able to push the limits of graphical rendering. Objectives. This thesis investigates if the Direct3D 12 API provides higher rendering performance when compared to its predecessor Direct3D 11. Methods. The method used is an experiment, in which a benchmark rendering basic shaded geometry using both of the APIs while measuring their performance was developed. The focus was aimed at testing API interaction and comparing Direct3D 11 against Direct3D 12. Results. Statistics gained from the benchmark suggest that in this experiment Direct3D 11 offered the best rendering performance in the majority of the cases tested, although Direct3D 12 had specific scenarios where it performed better. Conclusions. As a conclusion the benchmark gave contradicting results when compared to other studies. This could be dependent on the implementation, software or hardware used. In the tests Direct3D 12 was closer to its Direct3D 11 counterpart when more cores were used. A platform with more processing cores available to execute in parallel could reveal if Direct3D 12 could offer better performance in that experimental setting. In this study Direct3D 12 was implemented as to imitate Direct3D 11. If the implementation was further aligned with Direct3D 12 recommendations other results might be observed. Further study could be conducted to give a better evaluation of rendering performance.

<p>I den här rapporten så visas hur realtidsrendering av fågelfjäder kan implementaras. Ett lindenmayersystem (L-system) används för att skapa geometri med hjälp av ett fåtal bézierkurvor. Naturliga variationer hos fjädrar modelleras genom att introducera externa krafter som ackumuleras slumpmässigt när L-systemet genererar geometrin. Bidirectional texture functions (BTF) används för färgsättning och effektiv modellering av fjäderns finstruktur. BTF är en sexdimensionell struktur som kan representera verkliga material genom att innehålla, förutom de två vanliga texturkoordinaterna, koordinater för betraktnings- och belysningsvinklar. För att kunna använda BTF-texturer på grafikhårdvara så kompakteras dess representation så att den ryms i en tredimensionell textur. Anpassningar görs också för att stödja texturfiltrering och mip-mappning. För att ta fram informationen som BTF-texturen innehåller så modelleras finstrukturen i ett externt animationsverktyg, där ljuskälla och kamera animeras över de samplingspunkter som definierats. Strålföljning används sedan för att generera hur materialet ser ut vid dessa olika vinklar.</p>

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 102 pages / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Traditionally direct 3D interaction has always been limited to true 3D devices whereas 2D devices have always been used to achieve indirect 3D interaction. Till date no proper research has been done to try and extend the use of mouse to direct 3D interaction. In this research we explore the issues involved with using the mouse to accommodate the additional degrees of freedom required for 3D interaction. We put forth a unique and innovative design to achieve this objective and show that even a device as simple as the mouse can be highly effective for 3D interaction when supported by an appropriate underlying design. We also discuss in detail a software prototype "Direct3D" that we have developed based on our design and hope to take a step towards making direct 3D interaction easy, inexpensive and available to all computer users. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

After September 11, 2001, government officials and the engineering community have devoted significant time and resources to protect the country from such attacks again. Because highway infrastructure plays such a critical role in the public’s daily life, research has been conducted to determine the resiliency of various bridge components subjected to blast loads. While more tests are needed, it is now time to transfer the research into tools to be used by the design community. The development of Anti-Terrorism Planner for Bridges (ATP-Bridge), a program intended to be used by bridge engineers and planners to investigate blast loads against bridges, is explained in this thesis. The overall project goal was to build a program that can incorporate multiple bridge components while still maintaining a simple, user-friendly interface. This goal was achieved by balancing three core areas: constraining the graphical user interface (GUI) to similar themes across the program, allowing flexibility in the creation of the numerical models, and designing the data structures using object-oriented programming concepts to connect the GUI with the numerical models. An example of a solver (prestressed girder with advanced SDOF analysis model) is also presented to illustrate a fast-running algorithm. The SDOF model incorporates the development of a moment-curvature response curve created by a layer-by-layer analysis, a non-linear static analysis accounting for both geometric non-linearity as well as material non-linearity, and a Newmark-beta-based SDOF analysis. The results of the model return the dynamic response history and the amount of damage. ATP-Bridge is the first software developed that incorporates multiple bridge components into one user-friendly engineering tool for protecting bridge structures against terrorist threats. The software is intended to serve as a synthesis of state-of-the-art knowledge, with future updates made to the program as more research becomes available. In contrast to physical testing and high-fidelity finite element simulations, ATP-Bridge uses less time-consuming, more cost effective numerical models to generate dynamic response data and damage estimates. With this tool, engineers and planners will be able to safeguard the nation’s bridge inventory and, in turn, reinforce the public’s trust. / text

While the games industry grows, the need for visually appealing graphics increase. This drives the demand for new hardware and the development of new techniques forward. With the latest generation of 3D graphic APIs the new rendering pipeline technique tessellation was announced. With each generation of games getting more advanced, the demand for highly detailed models increase. This leads to a higher workload for the GPU. The purpose of this thesis is to research the fi eld of tessellation and develop a prototype to optimize the tessellation pipeline. The prototype is designed to help reduce the number of generated triangles by dividing the mesh into regions, each region with its own tessellation factor. The prototype implementation supports both manual and automatic generation of these regions. A new fi le format was developed to support the region data. The implementation was split into three parts; one Python based Maya plug-in used for preparing the model for exporting, one exporter for Maya that generated the output fi le, and one viewer application capable of rendering the resulting mesh. The geometry output of the proposed technique was evaluated by comparing it to uniformly tessellated reference mesh geometry. Measurements show that the proposed technique is capable of reducing the face count with minor or maintained correlation to the reference geometry. / Medans spelindustrin växer ökar behovet av visuellt tilltalande grafik. Detta driver utvecklingen av hårdvara och nya tekniker framåt. Med den senaste generationens 3D grafik API kom renderingssteget tesselering. Eftersom varje generation av spel blir mer avancerat ökar efterfrågan på detaljerade modeller. Detta leder till en högre arbetsbörda för GPUn. Syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka tesselering och utveckla en prototyp för att optimera tesseleringspipelinen. Prototypen är utformad för att hjälpa till att minska antalet genererade trianglar genom att dela upp figuren i regioner, varje region med egen tesseleringsfaktor. Prototypen stödjer både manuell och automatisk generering av dessa regioner, ett nytt filformat utvecklades för att stödja dessa. Prototypen delades upp i tre delar, ett Python baserat Maya plug-in som används för att förbereda modellen för export, en Maya exportör som genererar filerna, och ett visningsprogram som kan rendera den färdiga figuren. Figuren från den föreslagna tekniken utvärderades genom att jämföra den med motsvarande figur med universal tesseleringsfaktor. Mätningar visar att den föreslagna tekniken klarar att reducera antalet trianglar med låg felmarginal.

Game developers today are putting a lot of effort into their games. Consumers are hard to please and demand a game which can provide both fun and visual quality. This is why developers aim to make the most use of what hardware resources are available to them to achieve the best possible quality of the game. It is easy to use too many performance demanding techniques in a game, making the game unplayable. The hard part is to make the game look good without decreasing the performance. This can be done by using techniques in a smart way to make the graphics as smooth and efficient as they can be without compromising the visual quality. One of these techniques is deferred rendering. The latest version of Microsoft’s graphics platform, DirectX 11, comes with several new features. One of these is the Compute shader which is a feature making it easier to execute general computation on the graphics card. Developers do not need to use DirectX 11 cards to be able to use this feature though. Microsoft has made it available on graphic cards made for DirectX 10 as well. There are however a few differences between the two versions. The focus of this report will be to investigate the possible performance differences between these versions on when using deferred rendering. An application was made supporting both shader model 4 and 5 of the compute shader, to be able to investigate this.

Kontext: Displacement Mapping är en teknik som används inom 3D-spel för att skapa detaljrikedom i geometri utan att behöva triangelobjekt bestående av oönskad geometrikomplexitet. Tekniken har även andra användningsområden i 3D-spel, till exempel terränggeometri. Tekniken skänker detaljrikedom genom att i samband med tesselering förskjuta geometri i en normalriktning eller längs annan specificerad riktning. Vector Displacement Mapping är en teknik liknande Displacement Mapping där skillnaden är att Vector Displacement Mapping förskjuter geometri i tre dimensioner. Mål: Syftet med arbetet är utforska Vector Displacement Mapping i sammanhanget 3D-Spel och att antyda att tekniken kan användas i 3D-spel likt Displacement Mapping. Arbetet jämför Vector Displacement Mapping med Displacement Mapping för att urskilja skillnader i exekveringstid mellan teknikernas centrala skillnader. Skillnaderna i exekveringstid ställs i kontrast mot diskussion av teknikernas grafikminnesanvändning. Metoder: Jämförelsen baseras på en implementation av de båda teknikerna tillsammans med tesselering. Prestandamätningar genereras med implementationen som grund. Implementationen använder sig av Direct3D 11. Resultat: Resultatet som erhålls genom jämförelsen visar att exekveringstiderna mellan teknikernas centrala skillnader varierar svagt. Grafikminnesanvändningen mellan teknikerna skiljer sig med en faktor 3 eller en faktor 4 där Vector Displacement Mapping använder mer grafikminne. Slutsatser: Slutsatser som dras baserat på resultatet är att Vector Displacement Mapping i situationer där överhängande geometri är ett önskat resultat kan ersätta Displacement Mapping. Vidare diskussion förs kring slutsatser, avgränsningar och framtida forskning som arbetet berör.

Many companies over the years have been working with enhancing the visual effect of monitors and television with 3D glasses and such. There is a new form of 3D viewing right now; Spatial View is the one I know most about. Their technology includes a barrier panel technology which aligns the right and left eye simultaneously giving the person looking at the monitor a 3D viewing. Spatial View has developed an API that can be easily included in games and rendering applications to enable this 3D visualization and this thesis is about the computer performance cost. The API works in such a way that it takes 5 images of the current scene the camera is looking at in the game or rendering application and interlace them together to produce 1 image to be displayed on screen. Combining this with the monitor technique gives the visual effect. The 5 different camera angles that are produced can be a strain on the performance, meaning that the rendering API in this case Direct3D 9.0c has to render everything 5 times each frame. This can slow down the frame rate of the game, which is very important for the game to run smoothly. This thesis main focus is to understand the correlation between the number of camera angles and rendering time for Direct3D 9.0c, is it linear or exponential. By having access to Spatial View’s Direct3D 9.0c API, I was able to construct a test application which could answer the hypothesis. Six tests were used to investigate this with different numbers of camera angle to see the impact on rendering time. Using one, two and five camera angles for the test with large cubes (big enough to almost cover the screen) and small cubes (almost small enough to not see). After seeing the rendering time and understanding the API from Spatial View’s, a theory about reducing the rendering time arose. This theory will be explained throughout the thesis and discussed; it includes using Direct3D 10.0 with geometry instancing.