Apple Inc.

Christopher P Wright

Chad E Jones

Kenneth Christian Dyke

Assana Fard

Thomas W Costa

Ryan N Armstrong

James J Shearer

Bas Ording

John Owen Louch

Assana M Fard

Methods, devices, systems, and computer readable media to improve the operation of window-based operating systems are disclosed. In general, techniques are disclosed for rendering areas on a display in which two or more shadows overlap. More particularly, two or more shadow regions (based on the arrangement of overlapping windows/shadows) are identified and merged in a top-down process so that no region's shadow is painted or rendered more than once. A shadowbuffer (analogous to a system's framebuffer) may be used to retain windows' alpha information separately from the corresponding windows' shadow intensity information.

Unitary shadows

Methods, devices, systems, and computer readable media to improve the operation of window-based operating systems is disclosed. In general, techniques are disclosed for correctly rendering areas on a display in which two or more shadows overlap. More particularly, two or more shadow regions (based on the arrangement of overlapping windows/shadows) are identified and merged in a top-down process so that no region's shadow is painted or rendered more than once. To accomplish this a shadowbuffer (analogous to a system's framebuffer) may be used to retain windows' alpha information separately from the corresponding windows' shadow intensity information.

An operating system creates one or more virtual display interfaces for communication of display data and user input events between the application layer and one or more virtual display devices. The one or more virtual display devices are not physically connected to the computing system managed by the operating system. One or more applications are executed in an application layer. At least one of the one or more applications communicates display data to and receives user input events from at least one of the one or more display devices using at least one of the display interfaces. At least one other of the one or more applications communicates display data to and receives user input events from at least one of the one or more virtual display devices using at least one of the one or more virtual display interfaces.

System and method for virtual displays

A logical framebuffer may identify pixels areas or blocks of an image that have changed between successive frames. The pixel values of these identified areas may be copied and/or scaled from more recent frames and merged into older frames stored in scanout buffers of an image display system to update older buffers. The logical framebuffer may compare image data at a resolution that is greater than or equal to the resolution of the scanout buffers. Scaling may be used to downscale changed pixel areas frames stored at the higher resolution of logical framebuffer that are to be copied into older frames at the lower resolution of the scanout buffers to update the older frames. Changed pixel areas may also be copied from a newer frame buffered at the lower resolution after the older frame. Latency may be reduced. Image processors, display systems, and methods are provided.

Page flipping with backend scaling at high resolutions

A shape may be virtually generated from a formula specifying a scalable property of the shape that determines the appearance of the shape as the size of the shape is changed. Once the shape is generated, a reflection and/or shadow may be generated according to one or more customizable parameters specifying different properties of the reflection and/or shadow. Reflections and shadows may be regenerated with shapes each time the shapes are resized. Each generated shape, reflection, and/or shadow may then be outputted to a display. Systems, methods, and computer readable media are provided.

Dynamically generated images and effects

A system and method for applying motion blur to an application window. Motion blur may be applied to pixel in a window by calculating a velocity vector for each pixel in the window with reference to velocity vectors calculated for each corner of the window. Motion blur may be implemented by placing a number of blur samples in a frame along the pixel velocity vector according to the size of the pixel vector, or by directionally downsampling then re-upsampling the content of the window. For a frame having multiple windows, the motion blur for each window may be determined independent of the motion of other windows or as a composite for windows moving together. According to an embodiment, for each pixel in the frame, the associated application window may be identified and the pixel blurred with reference to the corner velocities of the associated application window.

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Christopher P Wright