What is simulating acceleration in computer graphics?

Answer 1

It depends on whether you mean:

1. Emulating hardware acceleration

2. Simulating an acceleration in computer graphics cinematics (non interactive animations).

3. Simulating an accelaration in a phisical simulation, in a whatever interactive application.

1. In my old computer i happened to lose the open gl support, more recent games using open gl refused to run. Quake 2 though, ran with all the Open gl libraries activated, mip mapping antialiasing, coloured lights, accurate translucency etc. Acceleration support failed, but open gl libraries still worked, it worked better than softwar mode, both graphic and performance wise, but slower than when acceleration were supported.

2. Animations are usually handled via linear keyframes, that doesn't account for acceleration in itself. Given you are using a particular software for your animations, speed change during keyframe transitions could be found within options, otherwise you would have to do some hacks.

Note that any serious software for animations would at least handle set speed for keyframe transitions, procedural conditioned animations, and asyncronic keyframes for models ( let's say your model is going to throw up his arms, but the left arm is more raised, asyncronic keyframing, would allow for the left half raised arm to reach the vertical angle before the other arm, without needing extra keyframes).

You'd have to program speed variation, otherwise. You have speed, which is space/time, well in uniformly accelerated motion, you will have your speed - space/time increasing so much for time unit, if you have a machine that in 10 seconds reaches 100 kmh, it means it will be 50 km in 5 seconds.

To have an approx about how much distance you will cover over time, you will need a rough gaussian summation formula :).