Computer graphics has come a long way from the early days of line drawings and
light pens. Today anyone can run interactive and realistic graphics applications on the
hardware available on an affordable personal computer. While hardware progress has
been impressive, widespread gains in software expertise has been more elusive. There
are many computer graphics professionals and enthusiasts out there, but a comprehensive
understanding of the accelerated graphics pipeline and how to exploit it is less
widespread.
This book attempts to bring the computer graphics enthusiast, whether professional
or amateur, beyond the basics covered in computer graphics texts, and introduce them to
a mix of more intense practical and theoretical discussion that is hard to obtain outside
of a professional computer graphics environment.