Abstract: A controlling device 110 that splits a 3D scene 131 into 3D sub-scenes, each including a sub-volume 133 of the 3D scene 131, and distributes the 3D sub-scenes to multiple rendering devices 120. Each rendering device 120 independently determines a 2D sub-image 141 responsive to its 3D sub-scene and a rendering viewpoint 132. The 2D sub-images 141 are composited using a back-to-front partial ordering with respect to the rendering viewpoint 132.

Abstract: A distributed rendering system with compression of streams of rendering commands. The controlling device 110 fits streams of rendering commands to the rendering devices 120 within the frame duration by distributing compressed streams. Streams are compressed by caching relatively duplicative sequences of rendering commands. To provide additional efficiency, textures that are mapped to 3D objects can be stored at the rendering devices 120 such that they do not need to be sent from a controlling device 110 everytime the rendering device 120 needs them. Also, long chains of individual vertex calls can be converted on the fly into vertex arrays.

Abstract: A system embodying the invention includes a controlling device 110 and a set of rendering devices 120, with the effect that the controlling device 110 can distribute a set of objects to the rendering devices 120. Each rendering device 120 computes a (2D) image in response to the objects assigned to it, including computing multiple overlapping images and using a graphics processor 119 to blend those images into a resultant image. To interface with the graphics processor, each rendering device 120 spoofs the ?-value with a pixel feature other than opacity (opacity is expected by the graphics processor 119), with the effect that the graphics processor 119 delivers useful ?-values, while still delivering correct color values, for each pixel. This has the effect that the resultant images include transparency information sufficient to combine them using transparency blending.