Among the most defining features of the PlayStation when it first debuted in 1995 was its ability to handle 3D graphics in real-time and was among the first consoles that really brought real-time 3D visuals to the home console scene. Something that was previously only really seen in arcades and personal computers of the time. This chapter will go over the 3D graphics architecture of the PlayStation to fill-in the programmer to better grasp the chapters that follow in this section.
Also of note, these chapters expect the programmer to posses prior knowledge of at least some level of 3D graphics programming, so one may want to brush up on the basics of 3D geometry elsewhere before proceeding.
In contrast, the graphics architecture of the Nintendo 64 has a stronger resemblance to modern graphics processors such as floating-point matrices and vectors, perspective correct texture mapping with bilinear mip-map filtering and hardware depth buffer.