Math in… Video Games

In the early 90's, most monitor resolutions were 640x480, which meant 640x480 = 307,200 pixels. They also often had as few as 16 colors! Small images basically had to be pixel art.

Today, an average computer monitor has 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels and 16,777,216 colors. Pixel art is now typically only used to give projects a retro feel.

While the pixel is less of a fundamental building block for graphic design, 3D animations and computer games use models based on other simple objects: polygons. Triangulated models are particularly great since GPUs are specifically engineered to compute with triangles.

The more triangles you use, the better you can approximate a basketball, a dinosaur, or anything else you can imagine. In many games and animations, the number of triangles per model is high enough that you can’t even tell they’re triangulations!