ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the details of the implementation of control technology for computer graphics. Traditionally, developers use threads for smaller and specialised tasks such as network communication and to achieve parallelism in application design. In contrast, processes are used for heavyweight tasks and involve broader scopes encompassing most other subtasks of an application. The process of establishing a valid control system for a real-time rendering application requires special attention beginning from data collection and pre-processing and proceeding to system level moderation. When a non-real-time operating system is used, it is inevitable for kernel processes to introduce disturbance to the rendering system output. From a software implementation perspective, the selected communication protocol plays an important role in system performance. In typical network communication arrangements the transmission control protocol (TCP) or universal datagram protocol (UDP) may be used. Control techniques have been adopted across a spectrum of applications including flight dynamics, temperature control, and mechanical systems.
