Crossword clues for skybox
Wiktionary
n. 1 A seating area for VIPs in a stadium. 2 (context video games English) A cube with textures on its inner faces, used to simulate the sky or similar backdrop around a three-dimensional playfield.
WordNet
n. an elevated box for viewing events at a sports stadium
Wikipedia
A skybox is a method of creating backgrounds to make a computer and video games level look bigger than it really is. When a skybox is used, the level is enclosed in a cuboid. The sky, distant mountains, distant buildings, and other unreachable objects are projected onto the cube's faces (using a technique called cube mapping), thus creating the illusion of distant three-dimensional surroundings. A skydome employs the same concept but uses either a sphere or a hemisphere instead of a cube.
Processing of 3D graphics is computationally expensive, especially in real-time games, and poses multiple limits. Levels have to be processed at tremendous speeds, making it difficult to render vast skyscapes in real time. Additionally, realtime graphics generally have depth buffers with limited bit-depth, which puts a limit on the amount of details that can be rendered at a distance.
To compensate for these problems, games often employ skyboxes. Traditionally, these are simple cubes with up to 6 different textures placed on the faces. By careful alignment, a viewer in the exact middle of the skybox will perceive the illusion of a real 3D world around it, made up of those 6 faces.
As a viewer moves through a 3D scene, it is common for the skybox to remain stationary with respect to the viewer. This technique gives the skybox the illusion of being very far away, since other objects in the scene appear to move, while the skybox does not. This imitates real life, where distant objects such as clouds, stars and even mountains appear to be stationary when the viewpoint is displaced by relatively small distances. Effectively, everything in a skybox will always appear to be infinitely distant from the viewer. This consequence of skyboxes dictates that designers should be careful not to carelessly include images of discrete objects in the textures of a skybox, since the viewer may be able to perceive the inconsistencies of those objects' sizes as the scene is traversed.
The source of a skybox can be any form of texture, including photographs, hand-drawn images, or pre-rendered 3D geometry. Usually, these textures are created and aligned in 6 directions, with viewing angles of 90 degrees (which covers up the 6 faces of the cube).
Skybox may refer to:
- a luxury box at a sports arena or stadium
- Digibox, the set-top box provided by Sky UK
- Skybox (band), an American indie pop band
- SkyBox International, a trading card company
- Skybox Imaging, a satellite operator
- Skybox (video games), a construct used in 3D graphics to simulate skies
Skybox is an American indie pop quintet that formed in Tempe, Arizona in 2005.
After singer Tim Ellis moved from Missouri to Tempe with bassist Johnny Kenepaske, they soon formed a trio with drummer Aurelio Damiani. Finally, pianist-lead guitarist and vocalist Christian Fields, and keyboardist- percussionist Anthony Hornyak joined. Their musical influences include 1960s psychedelic rock, 1970s classic rock and 1980s new wave music.
Bassist-vocalist Jeff Gonzales replaced Kenepaske, and the band relocated to Chicago. They released their 14-track debut album Arco Iris in 2006, which was recorded by Jamie Woolford ( The Stereo, Let Go) and mastered by Jason Livermore ( The Ataris, Rise Against, MxPx).
The band was praised by Billboard magazine, among others. The band's song 'In A Dream' was later featured in an iPod commercial.
Gonzales, Hornyak, Damiani, and bassist Dan Ingenthron later left the band. The present lineup formed in 2010. The band's second studio album, produced by Sean O'Keefe ( Fall Out Boy, Motion City Soundtrack, The Plain White T's) titled Morning After Cuts was released in January 2010.
As of 2012, the band has separated. Tim Ellis is currently working under the label Outsides. Fields and Damiani are producing music with the band Provinces. Fields also plays drums for The Work Basement, as well as his own project, A Lesser Culture. In April 2013, Gonzales released his solo debut, ''The Lights Just Went Out... ''
Usage examples of "skybox".
Stars-Bills game was scoreless at the end of the first quarter, and as Phoebe left the field and entered the skybox, she was so tense she wished she could spend the next three quarters hiding out with a VCR and an old Doris Day movie.
Tachyon was waiting just beneath the ABC skybox, wearing his cavalier coat with the slashes and turnbacks, the riding breeches and boots.
She picked up her small purse and followed him out of the skybox into the hallway.
Ron volunteered to escort her up to the skybox before he made his regular pregame visit to the locker room, but she had already made up her mind what she needed to do and she shook her head.
Her neck muscles ached with tension as she twisted her head from the field below to the skybox television screen.
Instead, she and Viktor stayed in the skybox and watched the short postgame interviews that had recently been added to the Monday night game.
Sharon had been in the next skybox, the one the Stars used as an overflow for visiting VIPs.
ARRAIGNMENT, Chief Mercer had gotten the skybox at PacBell from one of his wealthy buddies.
There was a bathroom in the skybox, barely large enough to put on makeup in.
No matter how many times Riley offered to have a caterer bring a full spread into the skybox, his grandfather never wanted anything more than his peanuts and exactly two ice-cold beers.
Helmut, jumping up from a sofa in his skybox and striding confidently toward the group.
They looked like three captains as they stood at the broad plate-glass window of a skybox perched on the rim of Candlestick Park.
He stared out the skybox window into the night, or at his own image in the glass.
Conference Final in an astounding four-game sweep, and as Ty held the Prince of Wales trophy high above his head on home ice, he lifted his eyes to the skybox where all the Kidco execs sat watching.
The general trusted his people at JSOC command, but when it came right down to it, he was in charge and should have been there, rather than in the sit room as if it were a skybox at a Redskins game.