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Shadow Mask
In CRT monitors, the shadow mask is a metal plate full of tiny holes that is
attached to the inside of the glass screen. It focuses the beams from the
electron guns at the back of the CRT. The distance between these holes is
called the dot pitch.
SmartShader™
SmartShader™ is ATI’s patented shader technology, providing custom
transform and lighting effects for vertex shaders, allowing for finer control
over the shape and position of 3D objects, as well as pixel shader effects
that produce more accurate simulations of natural properties such as hair,
metal, glass, and water in a real-time rendering environment. Important
visual cues such as reflections, highlights, and shadows from multiple light
sources can be rendered more speedily and accurately. It also increases the
number of graphical effects that can be created, increasing overall
performance while conserving memory bandwidth.
SmoothVision™
SmoothVision™ supports high-quality and high-performance anti-aliasing
modes, both of which are required for creating high-quality 3D computer
graphics. Both of these modes provide users with the ability to choose
between 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, and 6x sampling, allowing for a total of 10 different
anti-aliasing settings, providing incrementally better, more realistic visual
displays. The SmoothVision™ technology maintains a high level of
performance even when a high anti-aliasing sampling rate is selected.
Specular Highlight
The bright, usually small, intense light reflected from a 3D surface with a
high refraction value. From the intensity and spread of this highlight users
can differentiate between a “hard,” smooth surface, such as metal or
porcelain, or a “soft,” textured surface, such as fabric or skin.
Texel
Short for “texture element,” the 3D equivalent of a pixel, describing the
base unit of the surface of a 3D object, such as a sphere; for a 2D object,
such as a circle, the base unit is a pixel.