US Patent 9483868 Three-dimensional visual representations for mobile devices

Rendering graphical objects to a display of a mobile client computing device by obtaining virtual object information, obtaining normal components of the virtual object, encoding an image file that describes the normal components of the virtual object, wherein encoding the image file includes encoding dimensional parameters of the normal components into color parameters held by the image file for individual image pixels so that the color information held by the image file describes the surfaces of the virtual object, determining a likely viewing angle of a user associated with the mobile client computing device, and modulating the color parameters in the image file describing the surfaces of the virtual object in response to an indication of a change of the orientation of the mobile client computing device.