Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Bede Jordan

Ashraf A Michail

Brendan Joseph Clark

Gerhard A Schneider

Pawel Wiktor Olszta

Orry Wijanarko Soegiono

Benjamin J Smith

Jeff West

James Tichenor

Steven Abrahams

Ana Lilia Otero Diaz

Geoffrey T Ebersol

Hamid Mahmood

Kshitij Mehta

William D Carr

Jesse Bishop

Ramona Canan

Jamie Marconi

Bharat Ahluwalia

Yang Liu

Meghan McNeil

Susmitha Kothari

George Xin Gao

A graphical user interface for a computer includes a dial control. The control can be implemented, for example, as a touch-based, pointer-based, pen-based and/or keyboard-based mechanism. The dial control is intended for manipulating a large range of values, such as a menu of items from which a user makes a selection, or a range of continuous or discrete values. A dial control can replace other control types such as a slider, drop down menu or text field. The graphical elements of the dial control include one or more displayed rings and a handle for each ring. Inside the ring, or in another area adjacent the ring, a value can be displayed. The ring can be manipulated by the user to change the value selected by the dial control. In the case of multiple rings, each ring can be manipulated independently.

Graphical user interface with dial control for a parameter

A gaze vector of a human subject is translated to a targeting vector that defines focus within a graphical user interface. Sensor data is received from a sensor system indicating pitch angle of a head of the human subject defining the gaze vector. The pitch angle is translated to a scaled pitch angle according to a pitch scaling function that increases amplification of the pitch angle in one or more directions as the pitch angle exceeds a start angle threshold in each of the one or more directions. The scaled pitch angle is output as a component of the targeting vector.

Head-based targeting with pitch amplification

Rendering different types of graphical content using a single primitive type. Embodiments enable graphical elements of different content types representing a scene to be rendered as a batch based on the single primitive type, thereby reducing data transfer and improving processing performance. For example, each graphical element in a batch of graphical elements can rendered based modifications to instances of a template shape, which represents a single primitive type usable for rendering different types of graphical content. The modifications to each instance can include modifying the instance according transformation data, clip data, and/or width and height data to position the instance in a scene, and filling the modified instance according to one or more of shape or brush data corresponding to the graphical element.

Primitive rendering using a single primitive type

Performing primitive composition within a user interface thread, enhancing the ability to scale a user interface framework to computing devices having limited resources. In one or more embodiments, a user interface thread walks a user interface hierarchy that describes elements of a program's user interface and directly generates static Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) data structures representing at least a portion of the user interface hierarchy. The user interface thread passes the static GPU data structures to a composition thread, which uses these static GPU data structures during generation of a plurality of video frames. This includes the composition thread, based on the static GPU data structures, sending GPU data and GPU commands for the plurality of video frames to a GPU for rendering.

Primitive composition

Performing real-time atlasing of graphics data and creation and maintenance of texture atlases for applications having dynamic graphics content. Embodiments include allocating a texture atlas configured to store textural elements for use in rendering graphical elements, and providing a graphics processing unit (GPU) access to the texture atlas. During subsequent execution of an application, when a graphical element of the application is to be rendered by the GPU, a block of space can be allocated within the texture atlas and a textural element corresponding to the graphical element can be stored within the allocated block. The GPU therefore has access to the textural element when rendering the graphical element.

Real-time atlasing of graphics data

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Bede Jordan