Evolution of computer Graphics, Graphics Systems: Video Display Unit

Video Display Units

Display Unit:
CRT LCD Plasma

Raster Scan Display:

Random Scan Display: Color CRT: Beam Penetration Shadow Masking Technique

Basic design of CRT.

Working
A beam of electrons (cathode rays), emitted by an electron gun, passes through focusing and deflection systems that direct the beam toward specified positions on the phosphor coated screen. The phosphor then emits a small spot of light at each position contacted by the electron beam and the light is emitted by the phosphor

Operation of an electron gun with an accelerating anode.

Explanation
Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through a coil of wire, called the filament, inside the cylindrical cathode structure. In the vacuum inside the CRT envelope, the free, negatively charged electrons are then accelerated toward the phosphor coating by a high positive voltage.

Working
Intensity of the electron beam is controlled by setting voltage levels on the control grid, which is a metal cylinder that fits over the cathode. 1) A high negative voltage applied to the control grid will shut off the beam by repelling electrons and stopping them from passing through the small hole at the end of the control grid structure. 2) A smaller negative voltage on the control grid simply decreases the number of electrons passing through. Since the amount of light emitted by the phosphor coating depends on the number of electrons striking the screen, we control the brightness of a display by varying the voltage on the control grid. We specify the intensity level for individual screen positions with graphics software commands

 The focusing system in a CRT is needed to force the electron beam to converge into a small spot as it strikes the phosphor. Otherwise, the electrons would repel each other, and the beam would spread out as it approaches the screen

Persistence
How long small spots continue to emit light after the beam is moved. How long it takes to the emitted light from the screen to decay to one-tenth of its original intensity.
Lower persistence requires high refresh rate & it is good for animation High persistence is useful for displaying highly complex static picture.

Resolution
Intensity distribution

Resolution is the number of pointes per inch or centimeter that can be plotted horizontally & vertically. The smaller the spot size, the higher the resolution. The higher the resolution, the better is the graphics system High quality resolution is 1280x1024

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Aspect Ratio
Another property of video monitors is aspect ratio. This number gives the ratio of vertical points to horizontal points necessary to produce equallength lines in both directions on the screen. (Sometimes aspect ratio is stated in terms of the ratio of horizontal to vertical points.) An aspect ratio of 3/4 means that a vertical line plotted with three points has the same length as a horizontal line plotted with four points.

Addressability
Addressability is a measure of the spacing between the centers of vertical and horizontal lines.

The picture on a screen consists of intensified points.

The smallest addressable point on the screen is called pixel or picture element In graphics mode there are 800x600
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When we zoom the image, its structure starts to appear.

We can see that the image consists of elements.

Such an image is called RASTER IMAGE or BITMAP.

Each element has its own colour

However, some images do not seem to consist of these elementsas they can be zoomed smoothly. Such image is called VECTOR IMAGE.

The differences
Vector image When zoomed its structure continues to be smooth Used for simple graphics and drawings Typical formats: EPS, AI, CDR, WMF, DXF, A special case: SVG Raster image When zoomed, its structure

shows coloured elements Used for photorealistic images Typical formats: JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG,

Raster-Scan Displays
1) The most common type of graphics monitor employing a CRT is the raster-scan display, based on television technology. 2) In a raster-scan system, the electron beam is swept across the screen, one row at a time from top to bottom. As the electron beam moves across each row, the beam intensity is turned on and off to create a pattern of illuminated spots. 3) Picture definition is stored in a memory area called the refresh buffer or frame buffer. 4) This memory area holds the set of intensity values for all the screen points. Stored intensity values are then retrieved from the refresh buffer and "painted" on the screen one row (scan line) at a time . 5) Each screen point is referred to as a pixel or pel (shortened forms of picture element).

Raster Scan Displays

 In a simple black-and-white system, each screen point is either on or off, so only one bit per pixel is needed to control the intensity of screen positions. A system with 24 bits per pixel and a screen resolution of 1024 by 1024 requires 3 megabytes of storage for the frame buffer. On a black-and-white system with one bit per pixeI, the frame buffer is commonly called a bitmap. For systems with multiple bits per pixel, the frame buffer is referred to as a pixmap.

 Refreshing on raster-scan displays is carried out at the rate of 60 to 80 frames per second, Using these units, we would describe a refresh rate of 60 frames per second as simply 60 Hz. At the end of each scan line, the electron beam returns to the left side of the screen to begin displaving the next scan line. The return to the left of the screen, after refreshing each scan line, is called the horizontal retrace of the electron beam. And at the end of each frame (displayed in 1/80th to 1/60th of a second), the electron beam returns (vertical retrace) to the top left comer of the screen to begin the next frame.

 On some raster-scan systems (and in TV sets), each frame is displayed in two passes using an interlaced refresh procedure. In the first pass, the beam sweeps across every other scan line from top to bottom. Then after the vertical retrace, the beam sweeps out the remaining scan lines . Interlacing of the scan lines in this way allows us to see the entire screen displayed in one-half the time it would have taken to sweep across all the lines at once from top to bottom. Interlacing is primarily used with slower refreshing rates

Random Scan Displays

When operated as a random-scan display unit, a CRT has the electron beam directed only to the parts of the screen where a picture is to be drawn. Random scan monitors draw a picture one line at a time and for this reason are also referred to as vector displays (or stroke-writing or calligraphic displays) A pen plotter operates in a similar way and is an example of a random-scan, hard-copy device

 Picture definition is now stored as a set of line drawing commands in an area of memory referred to as the refresh display file. Also called the display list, display program, or simply the refresh buffer. Random-scan systems are designed for line drawing applications and cannot display realistic shaded scenes. Since picture definition is stored as a set of Line drawing instructions and not as a set of intensity values for all screen points, vector displays generally have higher resolution than raster systems

CRT monitor
A CRT monitor displays color pictures by using a combination of phosphors that emit different-colored light. The two basic techniques for producing color displays with a CRT are the beam-penetration method shadow-mask method.

Beam Penetration
The beam-penetration method for displaying color pictures has been used with random-scan monitors. Two layers of phosphor, usually coated onto the inside of the CRT screen, and the displayed color depends on how far the electron beam penetrates into the phosphor layers. A beam of slow electrons excites only the outer red layer. A beam of very fast electrons penetrates through the red layer and excites the inner green layer. At intermediate beam speeds, combinations of red and green light are emitted to show two additional colors, orange and yellow. The speed of the electrons, and hence the screen color at any point, is controlled by the beamacceleration voltage.

Shadow-masking
Shadow-mask CRT has three phosphor color dots at each pixel position. One phosphor dot emits a red light, another emits a green light, and the third emits a blue light. This type of CRT has three electron guns, one for each color dot, and a shadow-mask grid just behind the phosphor-coated screen

 The three electron beams are deflected and focused as a group onto the shadow mask, which contains a series of holes aligned with the phosphor-dot patterns. When the three beams pass through a hole in the shadow mask, they activate a dot triangle, which appears as a small color spot on the screen.

Shadow Masking

We obtain color variations in a shadow-mask CRT by varying the intensity levels of the three electron beams. By turning off the red and green guns, we get only the color coming from the blue phosphor. Other combinations of beam intensities produce a small light spot for each pixel position, since our eyes tend to merge the three colors into one composite. The color we see depends on the amount of excitation of the red, green, and blue phosphors. A white (or gray) area is the result of activating all three dots with equal intensity. Yellow is produced with the green and red dots only, magenta is produced with the blue and red dots, and cyan shows up when blue and green are activated equally. In some low-cost systems, the electron beam can only be set to on or off, limiting displays to eight colors. More sophisticated systems can set intermediate intensity levels for the electron beams, allowing several million different colors to be generated.

Direct-View Storage Tubes

It stores the picture information as a charge distribution just behind the phosphor-coated screen. Two electron guns are used in a DVST. One, the primary gun, is used to store the picture pattern; the second, the flood gun, maintains the picture display.

Advantages/ Disadvantages
no refreshing is needed, very complex pictures can be displayed at very high resolutions without flicker. Disadvantages of DVST systems are that they ordinarily do not display color and that selected parts of a picture cannot he erased. To eliminate a picture section, the entire screen must be erased and the modified picture redrawn.

Flat Panel Displays

We can separate flat-panel displays into two categories: emissive displays and non emissive displays. The emissive displays (or emitters) are devices that convert electrical energy into light. Plasma panels, thin-film electroluminescent displays, and Light-emitting diodes are examples of emissive displays. Non emissive displays (or non emitters) use optical effects to convert sunlight or light from some other source into graphics patterns. The most important example of a non emissive flat-panel display is a liquid-crystal device.

Plasma Panels
Plasma panels, also called gas-discharge displays, are constructed by filling the region between two glass plates with a mixture of gases includes neon. A series of vertical conducting ribbons is placed on one glass plane, and a set of horizontal ribbons is built into the other glass panel. Firing voltages applied to a pair of horizontal and vertical conductors cause the gas at the intersection of the two conductors to break down into a glowing plasma of electrons and ions. Picture definition is stored in a refresh buffer, and the firing voltages are applied to refresh the pixel positions (at the intersections of the conductors) 60 times per second.

Output Devices
Stereoscopic viewing glasses: the user wears them to perceive stereoscopic view of 3D scenes displayed on screen
Used in screen-based Virtual Reality (VR) Has high resolution Limited head-movement

Head-mounted display (HMD): two small TV screens are embedded in a rack and placed in front of the two eyes.
It allows full-freedom head movement, and gives the feel of immersion Widely used in Virtual Reality (VR) A tracking system is used to report the position of HMD in 3D space.

Plotter Printer

Output Devices
Wide Screen

Input Devices
Keyboard Mouse Trackball: a 2D input device, usually used on a mouse or a lap-top computer. Space ball: hand held, non-movable. It uses a strain gauge to detect pull, push, and twist applied to the ball, and translate them into 3D locations. Used for navigation in virtual environments, CAD, etc. Head Mounted Display: Although it is primarily a display device, it can also track position and orientation Joystick: similar to the space ball. Can be movable and non-movable.

Input Devices
Data glove: a glove with sensors. Used to control a virtual hand for grasping, dropping, and moving an object in a virtual environment. Image scanner: input still picture, photo, or slides as images into computer. Touch panel: highly transparent and embedded over a display surface. Digital camera: directly stores photo shots as images on a diskette. Digital video recorder: input a video clip in digital form; often used for tele-conferencing. Laser range scanner: input discrete and scattered points on a 3D surface model from which a digital one can be built.

Input Devices
Motion Capture: input full-body, facial, hand movements