CS2013-final-report

GV/Fundamental Concepts
[2 Core-Tier1 and 1 Core-Tier2 hours]
For nearly every computer scientist and software developer, an understanding of how humans
interact with machines is essential. While these topics may be covered in a standard
undergraduate graphics course, they may also be covered in introductory computer science and
programming courses. Part of our motivation for including immediate and retained modes is that
these modes are analogous to polling vs. event driven programming. This is a fundamental
question in computer science: Is there a button object, or is there just the display of a button on
the screen Note that most of the outcomes in this section are at the knowledge level, and many
of these topics are revisited in greater depth in later sections.
Topics:
[Core-Tier1]
• Media applications including user interfaces, audio and video editing, game engines, cad, visualization,
virtual reality
• Digitization of analog data, resolution, and the limits of human perception, e.g., pixels for visual display,
dots for laser printers, and samples for audio (HCI/Foundations)
• Use of standard APIs for the construction of UIs and display of standard media formats (see HCI/GUI
construction)
• Standard media formats, including lossless and lossy formats
[Core-Tier2]
• Additive and subtractive color models (CMYK and RGB) and why these provide a range of colors
• Tradeoffs between storing data and re-computing data as embodied by vector and raster representations of
images
• Animation as a sequence of still images
[Elective]
• Double buffering
Learning Outcomes:
[Core-Tier1]
1. Identify common uses of digital presentation to humans (e.g., computer graphics, sound). [Familiarity]
2. Explain in general terms how analog signals can be reasonably represented by discrete samples, for
example, how images can be represented by pixels. [Familiarity]
3. Explain how the limits of human perception affect choices about the digital representation of analog
signals. [Familiarity]
4. Construct a simple user interface using a standard API. [Usage]
5. Describe the differences between lossy and lossless image compression techniques, for example as
reflected in common graphics image file formats such as JPG, PNG, MP3, MP4, and GIF. [Familiarity]
[Core-Tier2]
6. Describe color models and their use in graphics display devices. [Familiarity]
7. Describe the tradeoffs between storing information vs. storing enough information to reproduce the
information, as in the difference between vector and raster rendering. [Familiarity]
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