The Shaded Picture System was a 3D raster computer display processor introduced by Evans & Sutherland in October 1973.[1]
The Shaded Picture System was the first general-purpose, commercially available raster computer graphics display processor capable of real-time, shaded 3D graphics. It could only display black and white graphics at a resolution of 256 by 256.[2] It was extremely expensive, and very few units were ever sold.[3]
An image of a cube generated by the first algorithm at the University of Utah in 1967.A color image of a church generated by the FORTRAN simulator of the Watkins algorithm at the University of Utah in 1970.
The principles of shaded, hidden-line true 3D graphics were pioneered at the University of Utah in 1967.[4] However, this algorithm was slow and would take several minutes to produce an image. In 1970, Gary Watkins developed a FORTRAN simulator of a faster algorithm that would theoretically generate shaded 3D images in real-time, "if implemented in suitable hardware".[5][2] The simulator itself was still not capable of real-time shaded 3D image rendering. Evans & Sutherland developed a functional prototype of this "suitable hardware", which was later sold as the Shaded Picture System in 1973.[2]
About a year earlier in 1972, Evans & Sutherland sold the first and only CT1 to Case Western Reserve University.[6] The CT1, or Continuous Tone 1, was a specialized image generator, not meant as a marketable or mass-produced product. At the time, the CT1, along with G.E./NASA's upgraded Electronic Scene Generator from 1971,[7] would have been the only real-time raster graphics systems sold to customers comparable to the Shaded Picture System, although both the CT1 and Electronic Scene Generator were intentionally produced as one-off products and specialized for the needs of their customers.[6] The Shaded Picture System, in contrast, was intentionally marketed.[2]
An image of a Klein bottle generated by an E&S Picture System (left) and displayed shaded and in color on the frame buffer (right) in 1975.
In early 1975, Evans & Sutherland demonstrated a random-access video frame buffer using relatively low-cost semiconductor memory, which was much more capable than the Shaded Picture System.[8] When interfaced with a (non-shaded) E&S Picture System, the frame buffer had a resolution of 512 by 512 in grayscale and partial color capabilities. By the end of 1975, this frame buffer was commercially available.[9]
↑Kajiya, James T.; Southerland, Ivan E.; Cheadle, Edward C. (1998-07-01), "A random-access video frame buffer", Seminal graphics: pioneering efforts that shaped the field, Volume 1, vol.1, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, pp.315–320, doi:10.1145/280811.281022, ISBN978-1-58113-052-2, retrieved 2024-11-09{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
