Depth Pass

Depth Pass, also known as Depth Map, Depth Buffering, or Z-Depth, is one possible layer of a multi-layered render pass. It is a specialised pass, intended to make subsequent passes less computationally expensive, and so is one of the first passes made in a render.

It works by scanning through the visible scene (or the whole scene in some cases) and stores the vertex locations of all objects relative to distance from the user, so that calculations such as occlusion or Z-fighting can be worked out as early as possible. It provides this spatial information to all further render passes.

If speed is of the essence, a depth map is pre-made as a compiled lookup table separate to the rendering process. However, this type of depth map is often slow to change, and so difficult to integrate into a dynamic, changing environment. It is most frequently used in static environments such as gameworlds and medical VRs, as opposed to social virtual reality applications.

See Also: Z-fighting, Irregular Z-buffer, Z-buffer, Depth Perception, Depth Fog, Depth of Field, Depth Blur, Z-culling, Z-buffering, Z-Sorting, Depth Cues, Render Pass

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Beauty Pass Colour Pass Depth Map Depth Pass Diffuse Pass Highlight Pass

Lighting Pass Reflection Pass Shadow Pass Specular Pass

Z-Depth

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Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm
NewScientist reports on six hypothetical ways to make robotic beings that will not harm humans. Not that any of them are likely to come to pass.

AI researchers believe 'Rascals' can pass Turing test
Passing the Turing test -the holy grail of artificial intelligence, whereby a human conversing with a computer can't tell it's not human- may now be possible via VR with a Blue Gene supercomputer, according to AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

What's in a name? ...a demotion for the darling concept of the real
Virtual always suggests unreal, or imaginary. A virtual entity can pass for, a real thing but is less than the real thing itself. Sounds like a nice statement. Are we really so sure its true?

Cranial Nerves
There are twelve cranial nerve pairings (making 24 nerves in total) which split out from the brain, and move to cover the needs of the cranium and face, rather than make their way down through the central spinal cord. These nerves are important to consider, as most are of critical importance to sensory data, yet do not pass through the central cord, and so cannot be intercepted at the same juncture.

A Sterile World
Smell is a sense often overlooked in a virtual world. Developers discount its importance, as a minor sense, when in truth we rely on it as an input channel to flesh out the world around us. Scents carry on the breeze, and they are with us all the time: from the perfumed odours of pollen blowing in the wind, to the pong as you pass a full dustbin, to the aroma of freshly cooked food wafting out of a pub.

Virtual Girl

Virtual girl is firmly placed for all time, in the category of camp, cheesy, low budget trash, attempting to pass itself off as VR. It?s a film with a schizophrenic direction. Half the time it is trying oh so hard, so desperately hard to be a sci-fi film about VR technology gone wrong. The other half of the time, it is trying to be soft core pornography. Thus, it fails miserably at both.

I 0Wn Y0u, d0Od! Part Deux
A detailed, in-depth look at why selling content from within MMOs, to others can damage the business on the company in question, by looking at the effect it has on the costs of the MMO.

Unicorns: The Unicorn's Meadow
A great little site, going into depth abut the unicorn. Well worth a look.

Role-Play vs. Multi-play
An argument that playing multiple characters or alts on a roleplaying world, decreases the ability to roleplay in any depth. Well reasoned.

Losing Players to Responsibility
A short, poignant article on the effects in any game or social VR environment where an individual from the userbase shows promise, and is given more and more responsibility until they feel they are completely out of their depth.

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