If you have ever looked at a fantastic adventure or science fiction movie or an amazingly
complex and rich computer game or a TV commercial where cars or gas pumps or biscuits behaved
liked people and wondered How do they do that? then you've experienced the magic of 3D worlds
generated by a computer. 3D in computers began as a way to represent automotive designs and
illustrate the construction of molecules. 3D graphics use evolved to visualizations of
simulated data and artistic representations of imaginary worlds. In order to overcome the
processing limitations of the computer graphics had to exploit the characteristics of the eye
and brain and develop visual tricks to simulate realism. The goal is to create graphics images
that will overcome the visual cues that cause disbelief and tell the viewer this is not real.
Thousands of people over thousands of years have developed the building blocks and made the
discoveries in mathematics and science to make such 3D magic possible and The History of
Visual Magic in Computers is dedicated to all of them and tells a little of their story. It
traces the earliest understanding of 3D and then foundational mathematics to explain and
construct 3D from mechanical computers up to today's tablets. Several of the amazing computer
graphics algorithms and tricks came of periods where eruptions of new ideas and techniques seem
to occur all at once. Applications emerged as the fundamentals of how to draw lines and create
realistic images were better understood leading to hardware 3D controllers that drive the
display all the way to stereovision and virtual reality.
