{"id":423,"date":"2015-10-26T08:30:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/?p=423"},"modified":"2016-04-07T10:55:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T14:55:53","slug":"turner-whitted-and-virtual-realityfrom-promise-to-practical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/news\/turner-whitted-and-virtual-realityfrom-promise-to-practical\/","title":{"rendered":"Turner Whitted and Virtual Reality: From Promise to Practical"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Turner<\/a>
Turner Whitted, a computer scientist at NVIDIA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The text you are currently reading is crisp and clear thanks to Turner <\/span>Whitted, a computer scientist at NVIDIA. While working at Microsoft in 2000, he invented the ClearType algorithm that uses shades of grey to smooth text pixels and make letter boundaries clearer. Modified versions of this algorithm are used practically everywhere from mobile phones and smartwatches to laptops. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The ClearType method refashioned\u00a0the appearance of text making it easier to read than\u00a0older black and white models.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Thursday, October 22nd, Whitted spoke to a crowded audience in Thompson Physics Building on virtual reality, a topic he thinks will revolutionize technology. Whitted worked at Hasbro from 1992 to 1994 to design a virtual reality system. While it never went to stores because of changes in Hasbro\u2019s business model, he describes it as very fruitful. \u201cSometimes our failures are the most exciting.\u201d Virtual reality is becoming available to consumers through devices like Oculus Rift, but Whitted emphasized there are many remaining barriers such as\u00a0poor resolution and limited field of view. He currently works at NVIDIA on graphics problems.<\/p>\n

\"Turner<\/a>
Turner Whitted’s iconic 1980 rendering of a sphere and checkerboard using his ray tracing algorithm. It was unprecedented for the time because of the reflections, shadows, and refraction seen in the spheres.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The talk was perfectly timed for students taking Prof. Morgan McGuire\u2019s Computer Science 136 course. During lab this week, they are writing a program to render 3-dimensional images using Whitted\u2019s seminal ray tracing algorithm. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The text you are currently reading is crisp and clear thanks to Turner Whitted, a computer scientist at NVIDIA. While working at Microsoft in 2000, he invented the ClearType algorithm that uses shades of grey to smooth text pixels and make letter boundaries clearer. Modified versions of this algorithm are used practically everywhere from mobile … Continue reading Turner Whitted and Virtual Reality: From Promise to Practical<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1004,"featured_media":430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[65459,21878],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-science","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/scientephic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}