Single Scattering Effects for Computer Games

International audienceThis paper addresses the rendering of single scattering effects such as glows and shafts of light, along with volumetric shadows induced by shadow casters in the participating media in real-time. Our method is easy to integrate in a video game graphics engine using the shadow volume technique since it requires only a little additional texture memory and is implemented with simple shaders. Realistic images can be produced in real-time for usual graphic scenes and at a high level framerate for complex scenes, allowing changes in the properties of participating medium, animations of objects and even light sources movements

Perception, Gender and Social Media Usage by Students of Tertiary Institutions in Delta State, Nigeria

Studies have indicated increased use of the social media by students for varied purposes. The students also have different perception of the social media. However, such studies are scanty with reference to students in the higher institutions of learning in Delta State, Nigeria. Therefore, this study examined the perception and gender of students of tertiary institutions of learning in Delta State, Nigeria and their pattern of the social media usage. The study was guided by Uses and Gratification theory, which emphasizes why people use the media and the gratification they derive from the usage. Questionnaire was used to collect data from 5382 respondents across six institutions. Simple random technique was used to select the institutions. The individual respondents were subsequently selected randomly. The data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Hypotheses were tested at P< 0.05 level of significance. The finding showed that the students use the social media primarily for 14 different purposes. They use only 4.38% of the 253 social media. They use social media frequently and they have positive perception of them; there is significant relationship between the students’ perception and their usage of the social media. There is no significant relationship between gender and the students’ usage of the social media. The study recommends that the authorities of the institutions should formulate and implement productive ICT policies and enlighten the students on how to use the social media for positive and productive purposes. Keywords: Social media, Perception, Usage pattern; Institutions of higher learning, Mainstream MediaDOI: 10.7176/NMMC/89-02 Publication date: April 30th 2020

The Use of Social Media and Participation in Political Communication in the 2019 General Election in Nigeria

Research findings have shown that the social media are very active in promotion of citizens’ participation in political and electoral procession in many countries. However, the Nigerian voters before the advent of the social media have been mainly receivers of information on election without being active participants in the electoral information flow. The voters did not have access to the mainstream media which had hitherto been the main conveyors of electoral information. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine how the electorate in Delta State, Nigeria used the social media for participation in political communication during the 2019 Nigerian general elections. The study is guided by the Technological Acceptance Model which explains how users come to accept and use a technology. The study used survey and questionnaire as method and instrument respectively to gather the data. We used both simple random sampling technique and purposive sampling technique. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results show that the voters are highly exposed to political communication in the social media; they have favourable perception of the social media usage for political communication; they prefer the social media to the mainstream media in participation in political communication; and they participate more actively in political communication during the said election through the social media more than they did previous elections through the mainstream media. We recommend that that the voters should sustain their exposure to the use of the social media for political participation so that can also be kept abreast of the happenings in the political terrain and they should continue to use the social media to interrogate political leaders, election candidates during elections and after the election period. Keywords: Silenced electorate; Nigerian general elections; social media and elections; political participation; participation in political communication, participation in political discourse.DOI: 10.7176/IKM/10-3-03 Publication date: April 30th 202

Skeleton based importance sampling for path tracing

International audienceWhen working with large and complex scenes, situations arise where light flux takes complex paths to reach the observer. In such cases, traditional stochastic algorithms, like ray tracing algorithms, will have difficulties to compute noise-free images. Our present research aims to solve this problem using the 3d scene skeleton as a coarse representation. Indeed, curvilinear skeletons can be used to find light paths with higher energy. This article presents our research to use these skeletons for any ray tracing algorithm, allowing a knowledge-based choice when choosing light paths. Our method adds little computation time while producing a more accurate image

Relationship Experiences and Parenting Attitudes

Attachment styles are a popular topic of study in psychology. Despite there being a lot of research available on how one’s attachment style as a child influences other relationships, there is a lack of research available on the relationship between one’s attachment style and one’s subsequent parenting attitudes. To study this, an online survey was distributed containing questions about attachment style and parenting attitudes. This study hypothesized that participants with a secure attachment style will score higher on both the warmness scale and rules scale of the parenting attitudes section of the survey. Data was collected from 164 respondents. Results concluded that there was not a significant difference between insecurely attached individuals and securely attached individuals on the warmth subscale, but there was a significant difference between securely attached individuals and insecurely attached individuals on the rules subscale, with the mean rules score being higher in securely attached individuals

Practical morphological antialiasing on the GPU

International audienceThe subject of antialiasing techniques has been actively explored for the past 40 years. The classical approach involves computing the average of multiple samples for each final sample. Graphics hardware vendors implement various refinements of these algorithms. Computing multiple samples (MSAA) can be very costly depending on the complexity of the shading, or in the case of raytracing. Moreover, image-space techniques like deferred shading are incompatible with hardware implementation of MSAA since the lighting stage is decorrelated from the geometry stage. A filter based approach called Morphological Antialiasing (MLAA) was recently introduced [2009]. This technique does not need multiple samples and can efficiently be implemented on CPU using vector instructions. However, this filter is not linear and requires deep branching and image-wise knowledge which can be very inefficient on graphics hardware. We introduce an efficient adaptation of the MLAA algorithm running flawlessly on medium range GPUs

Real Time Rendering of Atmospheric Scattering and Volumetric Shadows

International audienceReal time rendering of atmospheric light scattering is one of the most difficult lighting effect to achieve in computer graphics. This paper presents a new real time method which renders these effects including volumetric shadows, which provides a great performance improvement over previous methods. Using an analytical expression of the light transport equation we are able to render directly the contribution of the participating medium on any surface. The rendering of shadow planes, sorted with a spatial coherence technique, and in the same philosophy than the shadow volume algorithm will add the volumetric shadows. Realistic images can be produced in real time for usual graphic scenes and at a high level framerate for complex scenes, allowing animation of lights, objects or even participating media. The method proposed in this paper use neither precomputation depending on light positions, nor texture memory