PCT No. PCT/JP96/00328 Sec. 371 Date Jan. 9, 1997 Sec. 102(e) Date Jan. 9, 1997 PCT Filed Feb. 15, 1996 PCT Pub. No. WO96/25211 PCT Pub. Date Aug. 22, 1996There is disclosed a three-dimensional game apparatus which enables a player to sense the passage of time and can give variety to game and demo scenes. The apparatus includes a virtual time computation section (120) for determining a virtual time by computing the passage of time in a virtual three-dimensional space from the actual passage of time in the real space; a virtual three-dimensional space computation section (100) for computing the positional information of an object and the positional information of a moving light source such as sun in the virtual three-dimensional space with the passage of the virtual time; and a three-dimensional computation section (210) for performing three-dimensional computations including a shading computation on the object disposed within the virtual three-dimensional space, based on the positional information of the light source. A depth-cueing computation can be used to present the night darkness and a translucent computation can be used to present the moon disappearing in the sky or the like. If game stages each having a different game setting are used, the virtual time of one game stage starts at the time at which the prior game stage terminates. The virtual time may be passed while the demo scene is being displayed.
Three-dimensional game apparatus and image synthesizing method