DDJ, July 1997
Graphics Programming

Additional resources (listings and source code) for the articles below can be found here.

Implicit Surfaces and Real-Time Graphics
Kyle Lussier

Implicit surfaces are used in molecular modeling, animation, geophysical systems, weather analysis, and the like. They're also at the heart of Silly Space, the modeling application Kyle describes here.

A Memory-Constrained Image-Processing Architecture
Mayur Patel

Image-processing applications are hungry for both processing time and memory. The architecture Mayur presents here puts you in the driver's seat when it comes to controlling memory consumption for high-performance image processing.

RaveKit: A Portable Graphics Framework
Mark Carolan

RaveKit, Mark's general-purpose, cross-platform framework, lets you create interactive 3-D environments that provide an alternative way of presenting graphical data and obtaining user input.

Motion Blur Effects
Tim Wittenburg

Altering the appearance of "moving" objects using blurring techniques can add realism and excitement to your graphic images. Tim shows you one way to accomplish this.

Treaps in Java
Stefan Nilsson

Treaps, the randomized search trees devised by C.R. Aragon and R. Seidel, provide the functionality of a general-purpose sorting routine, priority queue, hash-table, stack, or standard queue. Stefan shows you how to implement treaps in Java.

Atmel's AT89C2051 Microcontroller
Dhananjay V. Gadre

Dhananjay presents a simple programmer for AT89C2051 that is hosted on a 8052-based circuit running a Basic interpreter. He then uses the system to build a 12-bit multichannel ADC to connect to PCs.

Thread Pools and Server Performance
John Calcote

As John points out here, thread pools provide one way of improving server performance.

Sounding Off with the RSX Library
Steve Durham

Intel's Realistic Sound Experience (RSX) library was initially developed to enhance the silent 3-D world of VRML. Steve presents WaveSpinner, an RSX-based tool that reads a script, animates and spatializes all the sounds using RSX, and writes the result to a .WAV file.

Tecate and Interactive 3-D
Peter D. Kochevar

By providing a set of tools for describing animated 3-D scenes and their interaction with end users, the Tecate system enables the description of interactive, animated 3-D scenes, and interfaces to existing applications and data sources such as the World Wide Web and remote collaboration.

Programming Paradigms
Michael Swaine

Michael returns to the topics of Java bashing, Java books, and JavaBeans.

C Programming
Al Stevens

In rethinking the relationship between C and C++, Al wonders if it is time to put the proverbial cart before the horse.

Java Q&A
Clif Berg

Cliff uses the JDK 1.1 multilanguage feature to create a multilingual currency calculator.

Algorithm Alley
Tom Citriniti
Will Schroeder

Polygon decimation algorithms reduce the number of polygons in a mesh while maintaining a good approximation to the original data, leading to faster, more realistic 3-D graphics. Will and Tom show how these algorithms are used and create a decimated VRML file.

Undocumented Corner
Robert R. Collins

Robert discusses the basics of in-circuit emulation, describing how it has become his primary software debugging tool.

Programmer's Bookshelf
Gregory V. Wilson

This month, Greg examines Jonathan Rosenberg's How Debuggers Work, Mark Woodman's Programming Language Choice, and The Media Equation, by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass.

Editorial
Jonathan Erickson
Letters
News & Views
the DDJ staff
Swaine's Flames
Michael Swaine
Of Interest
Eugene Eric Kim