Novell announced on Tuesday significant enhancements to the Xgl (X over OpenGL) graphics subsystem. Xgl is new core rendering technology for the Linux desktop that takes advantage of widely available accelerated 3D rendering hardware.

Early this year, I was inspired to create an experimental piece called varicose-g. Varicose-g uses a simple branching algorithm paired with the drawing API to draw an organic vein network. In Flash Player 7, the experiment ran slowly, and I was forced to dynamically clear older veins to reduce the graphic compositing overhead. This limited the generative quality of the experiment and reduced the complexity of the veins I could draw.

With the release of Flash Player 8, I was able to make a number of updates that significantly increased the performance, complexity, and visual interest of the piece. Check it out (requires Flash Player 8):
This article focuses on those changes, including the use of a custom bitmap caching routine, blurring remnant veins, and applying color adjustments. You can download the source code for this experiment in the Requirements section.

HP and Seiko I Infotech have signed an agreement to develop and market large-format printers specifically for outdoor graphics printing.

Perhaps you have a website, but you’re just not totally happy with the graphics, or you haven’t any graphics at all.

Graphic images on your computer come in two different forms, raster images and vector images. Raster images are made by programs such as Photoshop and Corel Photopaint.

It’s no secret that a picture is worth a thousand words or that people really do judge a book by its cover.

Called Google Earth, the 3D mapping service brings a combination of aerial and satellite photos to the desktop.

Chipmakers ATI, Nvidia, both see declines as Intel’s Centrino line gets a new addition.