A 2-D design in which the component shapes touch each other along all edges but do not overlap, interlocking in a pattern that completely fills a surface
Decomposing a complex surface into a series of simple ones that approximate the complex surface When drawing a surface, most API's have functions that allow the programmer to define the surface and have the program generate and place a number of triangles that define that surface This is necessary because no consumer hardware supports true curved surfaces, so they must be approximated by many triangles This approximation is called Tessellation, and the degree of Tessellation can be controlled so that a surface looks very smooth (with correspondingly slow frame rates), or it can look very Tessellated, where you can see the triangles that define it (with higher frame rates) FS98 does not currently employ Tessellation
describes a work of art that covers an infinite geometric plane without gaps or overlapping by use of congruent plane figures of one type or a few types
A tessellation (or polygon or mesh) consists of a set of polygonal faces which represent the surface of a 3D model A triangulation is computed to describe the neighborhood relation of all points
A sub-division of space into discrete elements Raster surfaces sub-divide space into regular tessellations such as pixels Polygons are examples of irregular tessellations
A pavement or tiling of a space by a mosaic pattern The EMAP design prescribes a regular tessellation on the United States, consisting of hexagons of 634 5 km2