Looking smooth: New program smooths out 8-bit graphics
From the archive: published May 27, 2011, 15 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Ever notice how old games look pixelly and so damn OLD? Well researchers Johannes Kopf and Dani Lischinski did, and evidently it pissed them off because they developed a program to smooth down pixels. As a result, you can now make everything in Mario’s world look sandpapered to heck.
Designed specifically to work with 8-bit games, Kopf and Lischinski’s algorithm takes every pixel in a 2D image and turns it into a soft, gooey blob. It’s something of a step forward: whereas other programs may discard pixels it deems unimportant, this one hangs on to every pixel, allowing for completely smooth, accurate gradations (the following pictures are from dvice ):
It’s not perfect, however – its creators acknowledge that it isn’t too hot on more anti-aliased graphics, as this image of the marine from Doom demonstrates:
Also, I just can’t get used to curvy Space Invaders. I don’t want to surrender to these. I want to cuddle them:
[ExtremeTech, via dvice ]