The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 04, 2001
Filed:
Aug. 02, 1999
Eugene Lapidous, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Guofang Jiao, San Jose, CA (US);
Trident Microsystems, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A method for evaluating the depth of a pixel in a scene, the scene enclosed in a view volume, the scene to be rendered from a camera position, the view volume having a near and a far plane, includes calculating a depth value for a pixel in the scene, the depth value being generated by a depth function of view distance within the view volume from the camera position, and storing the depth value in a floating-point format, the floating-point format including a mantissa and exponent, where, as the distance of the pixel to the far plane decreases, the absolute magnitude of the depth value generated by the depth function approaches the minimum non-negative number representable by the floating-point format.