Tessellation (computer graphics)

As tile graphics (also called short Mz tiles, Eng. Tiles ) is a (computer) graphic referred to, the assembled mosaic a much bigger overall picture.

Computer Games

The tile technique is often used in computer games, as the tiles are easier to calculate and less memory consuming, which until the 90s of computer technology - until the advent of 3D accelerator - was a touchy subject. The use of tiles leads to a certain aesthetically tangible, computer game form with tile -based landscape construction (English tile- based design ). Today, tile-based landscapes rather of tradition, because of the special optics or for flash games are developed which do not use the 3D capabilities of the graphics card.

Tile -based Games

Tiles fall on the fact that they can be seamlessly combined with other tiles. For many tiles as an overall picture. The composition and calculation of these tiles to form an overall picture is an internal module of the game, this is called Tile engine. The advantage of the additive arrangement is a great storage savings.

Besides square, draufsichtigen tile designs as with many Jump 'n' Run and Shoot - ' em-up games there are isometric tiles that give a three-dimensional impression. For them, the playing surface is usually - compared with the longitude and latitude information - a half height, but the here is not necessarily fixed. This assumes - more complex - the calculations iso engine. Certain operations, such as the audit of the Z- index, which calculates the spatial depth of arrangement and thus overlap the tiles will be calculated eg for ATI graphic cards on a tile. It is rejected or the entire tile shown (clipping) either the entire tile. Traditional tile sizes are 32 × 32 and 64 × 64 pixels.

Even with isometric games, such as simulations and racing games, the tile set is rectangular or square. This individual areas of the tiles are transparent; by the superimposed arrangement gives the impression of seamless inclined surface.

The tile set is stored in a file that captures the arrangement of a plurality of different tiles to the ultimate picture.

Webdesign

In the web, the tile technology is used for ease of handling or for saving data to be transmitted quantities. A common application is the background graphic, which, for reasons of economy or for aesthetic reasons (more uniformity for less distraction effect) by the repeated seamless joining of a single tile a repeating pattern is generated.

Geoservices

Another application is spatial data as very large and high resolution raster graphics, which are not expected to be needed as a whole at once. These are divided by means of geo-services into tiles and transmitted and displayed the parts as needed of the overall picture.

Web Map Tile Service is a standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium for map tile server.