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RaycastingEngine
Raycasting, in reality, uses no three-dimensional transformations. It has sometimes been classified as the "two and a half dimension" engine. The reason for this is that all the mazes that can be rendered with a raycasting engine are two dimensional maps.
For example, the Wolf 3D engine used a grid to represent walls. Walls looked esentially like cubes. The engine worked by "drawing" lines from the viewers position inside the maze, and calculating the first intersection with a wall. The distance could be used to determine the height of a specific column in the wall. This is repeated for every column in the image.
More advanced engines were developed that used the same idea. The Doom engine used lines to represent walls, instead of a grid. The result was walls that could be at any angle to each other, and any length. Using a form of a ?BSP tree, the developers were able to create floors and ceilings of different heights and textures, giving the world a much more 3D feel, even though the engine itself did not do any three dimensional transformations.
Interestingly, this technique is still used today. It recently became popular on the newest Nintendo handheld device, the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Advance is the first handheld console that has the power to render a raycasted maze. In fact, Doom has been ported to the Game Boy Advance console.
Raycasting engines share some similarities with Raytracing engines.
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RaycastingEngine
Raycasting Engines
Raycasting engines were popular in the time period after 1992. The reason for this is that they were extremely fast, and could present a believable representation of a 3D world, even on slow (by todays standard) computers.Raycasting, in reality, uses no three-dimensional transformations. It has sometimes been classified as the "two and a half dimension" engine. The reason for this is that all the mazes that can be rendered with a raycasting engine are two dimensional maps.
For example, the Wolf 3D engine used a grid to represent walls. Walls looked esentially like cubes. The engine worked by "drawing" lines from the viewers position inside the maze, and calculating the first intersection with a wall. The distance could be used to determine the height of a specific column in the wall. This is repeated for every column in the image.
More advanced engines were developed that used the same idea. The Doom engine used lines to represent walls, instead of a grid. The result was walls that could be at any angle to each other, and any length. Using a form of a ?BSP tree, the developers were able to create floors and ceilings of different heights and textures, giving the world a much more 3D feel, even though the engine itself did not do any three dimensional transformations.
Interestingly, this technique is still used today. It recently became popular on the newest Nintendo handheld device, the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Advance is the first handheld console that has the power to render a raycasted maze. In fact, Doom has been ported to the Game Boy Advance console.
Raycasting engines share some similarities with Raytracing engines.
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