Ok so basically…
Computer rendered transparency is a lie. I don’t know how I’ve never realized it, it may have been obvious to many people as many things that computers output are just mimicking things. (for example, RNG is not truly random number generation, not even close. The method that a program uses to output a “random” number varies but it’s not genuinely random!)

When I first came to this revelation there was two suspected methods that came to mind in regards to how computers render transparency. There are a lot of “layers” when it comes to looking at visual things, like images, UI, graphics, so maybe all that happened was the computer took in the RGBA value of the pixels in all previous layers and factored that into the pixel on the top. (I’m not saying you are looking at multiple pixels on top of eachother, I’m trying to explain the values that the computer takes in before rendering the actual pixel you’ll see.) So, that’s not a transparent pixel, that’s just a pixel!

In video games, especially 3D ones, this means the computer is doing this extremely often. Like too often for comfort. Maybe not that much of a concern with modern desktops and laptops but I often work with low end hardware. So that’s why I try to minimize transparent effects and models that utilize opacity aswell as always have an option to disable it all in the graphics settings. I also never take the time to model windows just for it to be a transparent square, that’s a little silly. It’s way more effective (and visually pleasing) to just make a flat window texture.png

Oh and yeah, it’s obviously the first method. There is not really any other method that computers use to render transparency, obviously. It’s kind of impressive how pretty and cool the effect can be though!

So, computer transparency is a lie… What’s next? Am I gonna find out that everything is not what we made it out to be? That just like how we programmed computers to mimic aspects of our real tangible world, have “we” programmed ourselves to interpret the real tangible world in a way that benefits us? Are our eyes just refactoring information? Well of course they are refactoring information, but if aliens exist, do they perceive as we do? Or can other beings in this universe exist outside of our curriculum of survival? Who’s to say they have the typical senses that our lifeforms are so accustomed to? And another thing, randomness is fairly a lie in real life too. As they say, everything happens for a reason. So maybe our perception of randomness in regards to something that we can’t really explain is all we need to know about who we are as beings! Maybe! Maybe not!