Patent ID: 7573485

Claim:
A method of generating weighted samples for anti-aliasing a pixel, comprising: in a graphics processing unit (GPU), generating a sequence of graphical primitives for a scene; in the GPU, selecting a number of real samples per pixel and a number of virtual samples per pixel using an Application Programming Interface (API); in the GPU, generating at least one real sample for a primitive covering the pixel, the real sample including z depth data and color data for a sample location within the pixel; in the GPU, detecting coverage of at least one virtual sample location by said primitives within the pixel; in the GPU, for each covered virtual sample location within the pixel, forming a virtual sample by generating a pointer identifying a set of real sample locations within the pixel that are also covered by a common visible primitive; in the GPU, utilizing said at least one virtual sample to adjust the weight of at least one real sample for anti-aliasing and generating an anti-aliased pixel; and displaying the anti-aliased pixel; wherein a selection of the number of real samples and virtual samples per pixel made via the API corresponds to a quality setting that determines a tradeoff between anti-aliasing quality, bandwidth, and memory requirements.