Tessellation is a method for increasing the geometric detail represented in a game through real-time shading, as opposed to increasing the polygon count of a pre-rendered object. Where most recently released games use normal mapping to create lighting and shadowing effects on flat surfaces, tessellation creates true geometric detail by amplifying the resolution of a "superprimitive" mesh, and then displacing the added vertices. For example:
Using tessellation produces high-resolution graphics without the need store a ton of vertex data on a disk, or in system and video memory. Installations will thus be smaller, and graphics rendering will require less bandwidth, because only a limited amount of vertex data for (what will become) a hi-res mesh needs to be transferred over the PCI-E bus to the GPU. The tessellator generates all the new data without storing it in memory.
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The image below shows how the same terrain mesh is rendered using bump mapping, parallax mapping, and tessellation:
And finally, we have a video comparison between normal mapping and tessellation in the same pre-rendered environment:
Once again, thanks to IT( )E Karnage for the heads-up.
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