FAQ

Contents

General questions

Why is your site empty?

Why is your site so boring?

What's with those scrollbars in the menu?

Will you have patches, hacks and utilities on your site?

What does Zacabeb mean?

What's come.to?

Questions on graphical technology

What is Z-buffering?

What is triple buffering?

General questions

Why is your site empty?

I haven't made any cars or tracks yet for NFS:HS, but as soon as I do I'll put them here.
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Why is your site so boring?

Maybe because it's pretty much empty. If you think the design sucks or it seems it doesn't look the way it should in your browser, please e-mail me so I can fix it.
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What's with those scrollbars in the menu?

The scrollbars appear if there is not enough room in the menu frame. The design has been optimized for 800x600 pixels resolution and up with a maximized window, but since I added the hit counter the scrollbars often appear. I've now tweaked the menu a bit, but the scrollbars might still show in 800x600. If you're bothered by the scrollbars and can't / don't wanna increase your resolution, but are running Windows 98 / Internet Explorer, you can try switching Explorer to fullscreen mode, that usually helps.

Will you have patches, hacks and utilities on your site?

No, there are alot others who do that already and much better as well. However, I plan to have a couple of useful links for anyone who stumbles across my site first, in case that ever happens.
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What does Zacabeb mean?

Well, it's just a nickname. As far as I know it doesn't mean anything at all. Maybe it means something in Klingon? :) However, here's the definition; Zacabeb is that Zacabeb does. ...whatever that means...
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What's come.to?

come.to is one of the base redirection URL's available through V3 URL Redirect Services. With a V3 Redirect URL, you can get a short, comprehensible and easy to remember URL instead of something like http://servername.internetprovider.com/~user/yourname/yoursite/. The V3 URL simply links to your normal URL, redirecting the browser automatically. So, you can get something just like come.to/zacabeb - a bit easier to remember, isn't it? These guys rule. Visit the link above to find out more about their service.

Questions on graphical technology

What is Z-buffering?

The Z-buffer keeps track of the distance to the things drawn on screen by keeping a distance value for each pixel. When a polygon is drawn, the distance to each pixel in the polygon is compared to the distances of the pixels already on screen. Pixels that are closer in the new polygon are drawn, and pixels that are further away are not.

The traditional process used to keep track of distance is called Z-sorting. Z-sorting compares the distance to each polygon by taking the average distance to each of the polygons vertices (corners). This is not only slower than Z-buffering, but it also means that the polygons can't intersect. One will always draw on top of the other. Also, sometimes it fails to sort the polygons correctly, meaning things show through each other.

Using Z-buffering does not mean no Z-sorting is needed. Since the Z-buffer only keeps track of the closest pixel drawn on screen, it does not remember what's behind it. This would cause problems when drawing translucent polygons, as anything drawn later will have to show through without also blending with what's behind. So, all translucent polygons have to be Z-sorted and saved up for last, after all the solid polygons have been drawn. They too can then be Z-buffered (though they cannot intersect quite properly).

The most commonly mentioned benefit of Z-buffering is speed (it's faster than Z-sorting), but the number of translucent and masked polygons in most games means alot of Z-sorting must be used anyway, so the difference is quite small in practice. The major benefit is that polygons can intersect without pop-through, which is unavoidable in Z-sorting.

N.B. There are other methods of creating 3D graphics which do not use either of those methods (e.g. raytracing).

What is triple buffering?

In order for the graphics processors to start work on the next frame while the current one is showing, two separate parts of the video memory, called frame buffers are used. The one buffer stores the current frame and the other stores the next frame while it's being worked on by the graphics processors. This lets them work on the next frame while the output processor, the RAMDAC, is busy reading the current frame and outputting it to the screen.

However, it also means the graphics processors might become idle at times. After they finish the work on the next frame to be shown, they must wait for the RAMDAC to finish reading the current frame buffer and skip to the next. The graphics processors can then start work on a new frame in the buffer the RAMDAC finished reading. Sometimes, this can waste quite alot of capacity that could be well needed. A simple and common solution is to let the RAMDAC skip to the next frame the moment that has been finished. This lets the graphical processors continue without having to wait, but it also means the frames will change in the middle of the screen. This causes a flickering effect called tearing, and is most noticeable on fast moving objects and scenery.

Triple buffering solves this problem by adding an extra buffer for the graphical processors to work in. This lets them start work on a new frame without having to wait for the RAMDAC, which in turn doesn't need to skip to the next frame in the middle of the screen. The extra buffer means there is always room for a frame to be waiting in line while both the graphical processors and the RAMDAC are busy. Thanks to this, it's possible to both keep the speed up and avoiding the tearing effect. However, there is the drawback of the extra buffer taking up extra memory, so the maximum screen resolution and/or color depth are lower than with double buffering.