graphics cards and 3d accelerator

[Malekovits]

Hi all,

what exactly is the 3d accelerator of any graphics card?

[luuckyy]

Sorry, I know nothing about 3D accelerators ...
But I suppose it has something to do with an extra processor with extra memory ...
Cheers ! 8)

[Thaellin]

A 3D accelerator is a hardware implementation of common 3D operations, such as triangle rasterization, texture application, depth buffer operation, and the likes.

If you can ask a more specific question we may be able to provide a more specific answer.

-- Jeff

[Malekovits]

I want to make my own graphics library (lighting and all these i 'll copy from opengl), with my ideas, and I don't have any idea how to say to computer how to descreibe the 3d world. to describe a 2d world is very easy, you are playing with the pixels.
Does the 3d accelerator take the 6 2d worlds, front, back, left, right, top, botom and transforming a 3d view?

[Thaellin]

No, I'm afraid that's not much like what a hardware accelerator does at all.

First, in order to interface with a 3D hardware accelerator, you need to use an API such as OpenGL or Direct3D. Your alternative is to get hardware specifications and write a driver - most vendors won't give you those specifications and writing a hardware driver is not a lightweight task.

Choose one of these APIs and start researching how to use it. They will use the hardware capabilities of your card as best as possible for the things you're trying to do with the API.

The APIs are designed to closely mimic the capabilities of the hardware. When you see a function in these APIs it very closely relates to state or data processing which will be performed by the hardware.

Good luck,
-- Jeff