Patent ID: 7649531

Claim:
An image generation device that generates an image by projecting, onto a viewscreen, an object in a virtually-defined space, the object being expressed by a plurality of polygons, said image generation device comprising: a flag value determination unit operable to determine, for each of a plurality of pixels on the viewscreen, a value of a valid pixel flag indicating whether or not a pixel is a valid pixel included in at least one polygon projected on the viewscreen; a pixel value storage unit operable to store, in a serial address region of a rendering buffer, only a pixel value of each of the plurality of pixels indicated as valid pixels, out of all the plurality of pixels on the viewscreen regardless of the position of the valid pixel; and an expanding unit operable to expand, in a frame buffer, the pixel value of the valid pixel stored in the rendering buffer, in accordance with the value of the determined valid pixel flag, wherein said pixel value storage unit is operable to successively store a plurality of pixel values including the pixel value of each of the valid pixels so as to avoid storing a pixel value of a pixel, other than the pixel values of valid pixels, between the plurality of the pixel values of the valid pixels.