Glossary » B

This is the light source that many conventional flat-panel displays use. The name is derived from the fact that cold cathode fluorescent tubes are housed behind the liquid crystal display layers and the light diffuser panel. The term can also be used for any form of lighting including LEDs.

The most common type of network that transmits data digitally but each wire can only carry one signal at a time.

The part of the monitor’s casing that frames the edges of the screen.

Bilinear filtering is the lowest quality filtering method but it tends to be the fastest. In a 3D scene textures often look fine when viewed from a distance but as you get closer the textures can become blocky as the individual texel borders become apparent. To compensate for this, Bilinear filtering adjusts the colour value of each texel by approximating a new colour value based on the values of the four adjacent texels

Basic Input Output System - low level operating system that resides in a small flash memory chip on the motherboard. The BIOS keeps track of all the components that are fitted to the motherboard and allows you to configure them. When you enter the BIOS setup screen on your computer you will find several options that can be changed including the correct speed of your processor and memory. Most of the BIOS settings are done automatically, but if you have components that are not detected properly this is where you can specify the correct values. This is also where you can enable or disable the various integrated features of the motherboard. Be careful with what you change in the BIOS as if you change the wrong settings you can cause actual damage to your components.

This is probably as good as bump mapping gets. In addition to using the mathematically more accurate Dot3 method of bump mapping, an additional stage is added where the pixel shader adds accurate reflections based on data from a cubic environment map.

The five separate connections found at the rear of some CRT monitors. These are in place to separate out the video signals into red, green, blue, and horizontal and vertical synchronisation. This decreases interference and bleed as the signals are shielded from each other.

Describes data transmissions over a single wire that can carry several channels at once. ADSL and cable TV use broadband transmissions.

Canon’s trade name for its thermal inkjet technology

Mode used for long exposures, which traditionally keeps the shutter open for as long as the photographer desires. Digital cameras with Bulb modes typically limit their maximum exposure though due to increased image noise.

Bump Mapping is the illusion of making a perfectly flat surface look as if it has a profiled surface. Simple, flat textures can be made to look as though they have bumps, grooves and wrinkles simply by using relatively simple bump mapping techniques without increasing the complexity of the polygons on which the texture is applied. Applying a 3D effect texture to a model so that looks like it has a bumped surface isn’t difficult but a static texture like this can’t respond changes in the direction of the lighting. The secret is to create a bumpy looking texture that can actively reposition its highlights and shadows in response to the direction of the light source thus fooling us into thinking it’s not really flat at all, and that’s precisely what bump mapping does.

One Byte of is made up of eight Bits. A byte represents one character, be it a number, a letter, any other kind of symbol or even a blank space.