Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!umd5!umbc3!alex From: alex@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Alex S. Crain) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: integer vs. floating point math Summary: programming to that slow reggae beat Keywords: integer, floating point algorithms, gray scales. Message-ID: <642@umbc3.UMD.EDU> Date: 15 Dec 87 09:27:30 GMT Reply-To: alex@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Alex S. Crain) Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County Lines: 26 Hiya! I've started to draw things on my 3b1, and life bodes well except that there is no floating point hardware available for the machine. Since I'm partial to both ray tracing & mandelbrot sets, I've gotten used to starting the program and then going to bed. It occures to me that what I'm doing is fairly restrictive in its range, and fixed-point numbers would work well here with a significant speed increase. At this point I step into a gray area of my experiance however, So I'm looking for algoriths. If anyone can point me at a source of general purpose graphics algorithms that use integer/fixed-point math to calculate line slopes, angles, circles, etc. I would greatly appreciate it. Also, the machine supports basic bit map functions for AND OR & XORing of bit patterns. What are the rules of thumb for generating gray-scales? What are the affects of different patterns, and how do you predict them? What relationship do gray scale patters have to color? Where do I look for answers to these and other questions? ThanX in advance... :alex. alex@umbc3.umd.edu