Real-time computer graphics

Real-time computer graphics is the subfield of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term is most often used in reference to interactive 3D computer graphics, typically using a GPU, with video games the most noticeable users (see video game graphics). The term can also refer to anything from rendering an application's GUI to real-time image processing and image analysis.

Although computers have been known from the beginning to be capable of generating 2D images involving simple lines, images and polygons in real-time (e.g. Bresenham's line drawing algorithm), the creation of 3D computer graphics and the speed necessary for generating fast, good quality 3D images onto a display screen has always been a daunting task for traditional Von Neumann architecture-based systems. The rest of this article concentrates on this widely accepted aspect of real-time graphics rather than expanding on the principles of real-time 2D computer graphics.

This article refers to doing the rendering-computation fast enough, so that the series of rendered images induce the illusion of movement in the human brain of the user. This illusion allows for the interaction with the software doing the calculations taking into account user input. The unit used for measuring the frame rate in a series of images is frames per second (fps). Different techniques for rendering exist, e.g. ray-tracing and rasterizing.

The goal of computer graphics is to generate a computer generated image using certain desired metrics. This image is often called a frame. How fast these images or frames are generated in a given second determines the method's real-timeliness.

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