Top 10 graphics technologies

At its heart, computing is all about numbers. The earliest systems were designed to crunch numbers and crack codes, and the basic level of all IT is still moving numbers from place to place.

But numbers are difficult for a species that has only discovered them in the past few thousand years. We're still a very eye-orientated race, and computers only really took off in the mainstream after we learned to deal with them visually. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is a very powerful concept.

So in the past three decades, graphics have taken a prominent place in the industry and helped to push IT into the multi-trillion dollar business it is today. Entire industries have sprung up around putting images on screens that are limited only by the human mind.

This week, in light of recent news from Adobe, AMD and Intel, we take a look at some of the graphics technologies that helped take computing out of the lab and into the hands of creative professionals and multimedia-hungry consumers.

Honourable mention: Inkjet printing
Iain Thomson: You might ask why, in a list of technology behind the visualisation of computing, inkjet printing is only an Honourable Mention.

After all, it has dramatically lowered the cost of printing to the point where anyone with $50 can produce images that would have required a commercial company 40 years ago. It's enabled businesses to create their own publicity material, and put a printer in every home that wants one.

But it's further down the list because the industry is stagnating and may soon be on the way out. While the industry will continue to supply domestic needs, it isn't a large-scale business technology but will last until we get flexible electronic screens, or at least that's my hope.

That's because inkjet printing is incredibly polluting and wasteful, considering all the plastics, inks and paper involved. Manufacturers sell units below production costs and make their money back on the ink, pricing it at around $5,000 to $8,000 a gallon, and it's often cheaper to buy a new printer than the ink cartridge to fill it.

Add in some manufacturers' insistence on microchipping their cartridges with sensors that show empty, and kill the third-party refill market despite it being a basic recycling facility, and you've got a system that needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

Shaun Nichols: A recurring joke among techies suggests that if cars were like computers we would all have $25 cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon. If cars were like inkjet printers, however, we would all be driving $50 trucks and gas would cost $100 per gallon.

Yes, inkjet printing really has helped to expand the appeal of the home PC and has made the consumer digital camera market possible, but I can't help cursing the people who developed the inkjet every time I have to shell out for a new cartridge. I would suggest that few things have driven the effort to save paper as the price of printer cartridges.

There are some interesting alternatives under development. The use of solid-ink substances is still being looked at, and some vendors are even developing cheaper printer inks that use waxy bars that resemble large crayons. They can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned.

Honourable mention: KidPix
Shaun Nichols: As a child who spent many hours doodling in Kid Pix, this one is a bit of a sentimental selection on my part, but I really do believe that it deserves recognition for the role it played in spreading digital art.

In the 1990s the personal computing revolution really began to take hold in earnest. While computers were becoming cheaper and easier to use, there still weren't many programs out there for kids beyond video games. One of the few applications that was usable by children and still somewhat constructive was Kid Pix, a drawing/animation tool designed for the four to 12 age group.

While it wasn't the most sophisticated tool out there, Kid Pix achieved its goal of allowing children to create digital art, and it inspired more than a few kids who would not have otherwise been interested in the field to later become digital artists.

Iain Thomson: Shaun's experience is not shared. Back in my day it was a green screen if you were lucky, but Shaun's eloquence in describing the system won me over.

After looking at it I can see why it appeals. It's MacPaint for kids, if you like, a hi-tech version of a crayon and colouring book, but with so much more potential. I suspect it's inspired a whole generation of graphic artists in its time.

The next generation of users got the ability to watch and manipulate video and one wonders whether the birth of the flurry of user content termed Web 2.0 has some of its seeds in this application.

10. Optical mouse
Shaun Nichols: At the beginning of the 21st century, computers had developed into incredibly fast, sleek machines that were barely recognisable as descendants of their ancestors from the late 1970s. One key piece of technology, however, remained relatively primitive: the mouse.

Everything else had become smaller, sleeker, faster and more precise, but the mouse still relied on the decidedly mechanical process of a ball that turned little wheels. Looking back, it was a bit like driving a racecar that still used stagecoach tyres.

Enter the optical mouse. With the use of laser tracking hardware, the mouse was able to escape the small pad, and to become much more precise and easy to wield. For users who made heavy use of graphics tools that required a precise and steady hand, this invention helped to make life significantly easier.

Iain Thomson: For someone who spent much of the 1990s using a paper-clip to strip off the layers of gunk embedded on my mouse wheel the optical mouse wasn't only precise, but much less frustrating.

The precision of the optical mouse made it loved by designers, but so too did the ability to throw away the most detested bit of desktop kit: the mouse mat. Future generations mining through our landfill will wonder why for a decade humans produced so many rectangular pieces of coloured plastic.

Artists like to make grand sweeps of the hand occasionally and having to do that without going off the mouse mat was impossible. Accuracy is all well and good but occasionally usability is a powerful selling point.

9. 3D
Iain Thomson: Various sections of the IT industry have been making a big push for 3D over the past few years, and it's obviously going to become this year's thing.

The ability to show pictures in 3D has been around for nearly 100 years, and 3D televisions were demonstrated in the 1950s. There was a spate of 3D movies in the 1980s, largely horror films like Jaws and Friday the 13th. Now it's back it seems, but I suspect it'll also fizzle out due to lack of interest.

At the recent Adobe MAX 2009 conference the producer of the forthcoming James Cameron 3D epic Avatar showed delegates selected scenes from the film. While the film itself looks beautiful, the experience of watching it was not. You have to wear special glasses and the effects gave some attendees headaches. At a similar demonstration at the Intel Developer Forum a few weeks ago, the results were the same.

Nevertheless, 3D TVs will be coming onto the shelves shortly, and I expect they will become the Betamax recorders of their day.

Shaun Nichols: 3D displays are a technology that has yet to find either a cheap creation method or a killer app to appeal to a broad audience. Given that the idea keeps coming back every 10 years or so, I suspect that sooner or later 3D is going to stick.

I mentioned the lack of a killer app, and I really do believe that's the problem. As an entertainment medium 3D is little more than a novelty. After a few minutes the gimmick wears off and users get bored.

Nintendo found an actual use for motion capture and used it to enrich the use of a product (the Wii). I suspect that, for 3D to stick, either an enterprise or consumer vendor will have to find a true use for it beyond simply sprucing up eye candy.

8. Maya
Shaun Nichols: If you've seen even a small amount of 3D graphics and animation generated in the past decade or so, chances are you've seen Maya's handiwork.

The 3D creation tool has become an essential piece of the arsenal in major computer animation firms around the world. Originally constructed from a number of smaller animation tools in the mid-1990s, Maya emerged in earnest over the latter part of the decade and into to the 21st century as hardware prices dropped and computer animation became more commonly used.

Those within the industry are without a doubt familiar with Maya, but most consumers and moviegoers still aren't aware of just how heavily many of their favourite films and shows rely on the application.

Iain Thomson: Out here in California we're at the home of the computer graphics industry, and Maya is as key to its development as the invention of the triple espresso.

While not a business application as yet, Maya has enabled a series of animations that would be impossible without serious casualties among the acting profession. In games, it has immersed players.

Maya is also at the forefront of making digital worlds more realistic. The software models hair, cloth movement, fluids and even air particles. It's this kind of attention to detail that will make online environments much more attractive.

7. AutoCAD
Iain Thomson: AutoCAD makes the list simply because it's used to design so many of the things we use and see every day, and is the de facto standard for much of the computer aided design (CAD) market.

True, when it first came out, engineers and designers hated it because it was cumbersome and difficult to learn. But the generation of engineers born after the time when the computer began to replace the draughtsman has taken to CAD with a will.

It's also been important in securing a valuable niche market for Microsoft. If there'd been something as good on the market to run on an Apple system the company could get the same loyalty from engineers as it does from the graphic design community.

Shaun Nichols: You hit on a big truth at the end there, Iain. If Steve Jobs had seen beyond the artist and consumer market he could have found a ridiculously lucrative market for the Macintosh, and the computing industry as we know it would be very different today.

Ironically, perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the CAD market behind engineers, architects and designers was the gaming industry. In the 1990s, when the first-person shooter market began to develop, game developers and home tinkerers needed an easy way to map out complex 3D maps for level design. Simple CAD tools came to the rescue and allowed for incredibly rich environments to be visualised.

6. OpenGL
Shaun Nichols: As it turns out, simply creating 3D graphics and animation isn't the hardest part of the process, as establishing a standard method for distributing and displaying them is even more of a pain. That is why today's software developers, hardware vendors and end users all owe a small debt of gratitude to OpenGL.

A graphics API by definition, OpenGL establishes a common architecture for creating 3D graphics on any number of platforms and cards. In addition to entertainment and gaming, OpenGL also has uses in the CAD and scientific imaging fields.

Without OpenGL and its fellow 3D standards (such as Microsoft's Direct3D) there's no mechanism for getting the work of 3D artists and developers to properly display and function on the screens of users. Truly it is one another of the unsung heroes of the multimedia explosion.

Iain Thomson: I think part of the reason for its relative anonymity is that it's fiendishly complex to understand.

But nevertheless, OpenGL has enabled the creation of stunning graphics, while crucially limiting compute time. The entire business intelligence market owes a debt of gratitude to OpenGL for making the visualisation of multiple data streams possible.

As an occasional binge gamer I also appreciate what the technology does for immersing the user in game play. This has, however, proved a rather mixed blessing.

5. Flash
Iain Thomson: If you watched a corporate advertisement or amusing cat on the internet then the chances are you were using Flash.

Flash accounts for around 75 per cent of all online video and is used by everyone for viewing and displaying what they have recorded using smartphones or digital recorders, online or off.

We'll see a lot more embedded Flash as time goes on too. The software is being optimised for low power and memory usage, and is going to be in everything from signs to TVs in the future.

Shaun Nichols: If you were to compile a list of essential tools for accessing the internet, Flash likely comes in at number 3 just behind an internet connection and a browser. Everything from banner ads to online games relies heavily on Flash.

The big selling point for Flash is that it possesses a rare combination of speed, power and economy. It allows webmasters to take files that would otherwise requires tons of code and storage space and pack them into a small deployment.

The best-known use of Flash these days is web video. Everyone from YouTube to V3.co.uk uses it as the basis for serving video files. When you see the size difference between a Flash video and a regular MPG file, you'll understand why.

4. PostScript
Shaun Nichols: In the early 1980s nobody would have even considered laying out a newspaper or textbook on a desktop computer, and why should they? Computers were lousy for that sort of thing as they completely lacked a way to layout text and images.

This changed in the middle of the decade, however, when the PostScript language was combined with an increasingly sharp crop of new printers. Perhaps the most famous use of PostScript was as the driving force behind Apple's first LaserWriter. By using PostScript to deliver printing instructions, the LaserWriter helped endear the Mac to the media world and gave Apple a professional user base that remains strong to this day.

The pairing of sharper prints and layout tools allowed even novice users to lay out complicated page designs, and led to the creation of a novel new field known as desktop publishing. From there, one can draw a direct line to the rise of home computing, self-publishing and even the development of the web browser and the rise of blogging.

Iain Thomson: PostScript was invented by the kind of obsessives that would probably get locked up if technology wasn't around.

The whole idea of refining the printed page was an exercise in geekiness. To draw a diagonal line the curve has to be broken down into a series of 90 degree angle jags. The smaller and more well placed the jags, the better the on-screen and printed outlook.

As Shaun correctly points out PostScript has also been closely tied to Apple. The ability to print those pretty pictures was what turned Apple computers from the hobby machine to something you could use for business. Software like VisiCalc opened up Apple for business.

3. MacPaint
Iain Thomson: When Apple launched the phenomenally successful MacPaint as a built-in application with its Macintosh line it spawned an entire new industry of desktop publishing.

The ability to create entirely new images and drop text around them made publishing a magazine easy and cheap. In the 1980s people could, and increasingly did, produce professional looking magazines from their spare bedrooms. This lowered the cost of entry into the market, and revolutionised the whole publishing industry.

MacPaint was superseded by other technologies, most notably QuarkXPress, as the most important factor behind the long-term success of desktop publishing, but MacPaint lit the fuse and deserves its high position.

Shaun Nichols: I mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating. Without desktop publishing, the concept of using a computer to display text and images together wouldn't gain much traction. Without that basic concept, we don't get the web browser, which means we don't get the web.

Aside from that, desktop publishing helped open up the idea that anyone could be their own publisher and get their own voice heard. This is the same idea that later manifested itself as the blog.

And then, of course, there's the impact that desktop publishing had on Apple. Without that market it very likely would never have made it long enough to develop the iPod or the iTunes service, leaving the entire digital media world looking like a very different place.

2. Photoshop
Shaun Nichols: Perhaps no single piece of software is as synonymous with digital media creation as Adobe Photoshop. The tool has become the standard for processing and editing digital graphics. In fact, it is so widely used that 'photoshop' has become the verb of choice to describe editing a digital image.

I know more than a few photographers and, for virtually all of them, Photoshop is a necessary tool of the trade on par with journalists needing a comfortable pair of shoes and a functioning index finger. The amount of lab time that has been saved by the tool is countless, and it is safe to say that Photoshop has revolutionised the field of photography.

But it isn't always a great tool for sharing the world around us. Photoshop has now become so powerful and its users so skilled that the tool has increasingly been used to manipulate images and insert fake images. Ironically, Photoshop is now viewed not only as a tool to help us see more of the reality around us, but also as a way to completely distort and fabricate that reality.

Iain Thomson: You only need to look at the furore around the latest 'photoshopped' image from the fashion industry to see what an effect it has on visual media.

I honestly think people would be genuinely shocked, and not a little angry, if they realised quite how much image manipulation goes on these days. Poor lighting on the shoot? No problem. Bad outbreak of acne and red eye? Job done. Whether it's Iranian missiles or a model's over-skinny waist you have to wonder what's real any more.

But that's the downside. The upside is that it has enabled a whole generation of graphic designers to create wonderful images and effects, and turn ordinary pictures into something extraordinary.

1. Graphics Processing Unit
Iain Thomson: Although by rights the Altair should be considered the first personal computer, it wasn't until computers with graphics came along that they really began to get ubiquitous. We are a visual species and computer graphics have taken their use into the mainstream.

While many people just use integrated GPUs these days, to really get the most from your PC visually you'll need a graphics card. Some of the latest models feature the most powerful GPU chips in the world and run hot enough to fry bacon if uncooled. Advanced gamers use some of the coldest fluids in existence to squeeze a bit more visual performance from them.

When I try and tell Shaun about the early days of computer graphics he looks at me a bit oddly. I suspect he'll have the same problem with his younger generation too, and this will be largely down to improvements in GPUs.

Shaun Nichols: Wait a minute Iain, do you mean to tell me that there was a time when computers didn't have GPUs? I figured that even ENIAC had a giant graphics unit staffed by two college kids who were constantly fighting over the best methods for improving frames-per-second.

Of course I'm kidding, but in all seriousness computing as we know it would not exist without the development of graphics processors. If nobody had thought to put more horsepower behind displaying images, computers would not have evolved beyond basic mathematical applications and we likely wouldn't have an IT industry to speak of today.

Perhaps even more impressive is that GPUs are likely to become even more important in the near future. After years of development and specialisation, GPUs have developed a secret talent that is proving quite useful.

All of that horsepower for rendering 3D images has left graphics chips quite capable for parallel processing tasks. This is leading many chip makers to turn some conventional CPU computations over to the GPU, and is helping to reshape the high-performance computing field.