Upscaling retro eight bit pixels

[BobA]

Looks like some advancements in software may give better displays of older games.

Pixels Upscaled

[SavannahLion]

some optimization could eventually lead to emulator that can upscale our our favorite retro games in real time.

note: I can't download the pdf file with the examples so I'm making assumptions here

I assume the algorithm isolate the image in question for processing. What happens if two sprites exist on the same plane? Where's the differentiation?

Also, even if you can improve the 8-bit graphics, what about the animation? It's still 8-bit animation.....

[Corbo]

Maybe some interpolation can be added in the case of animation to smooth them out.

The example give looks pretty nice, I'd like to see this made into a filter for a snes/nes emulator and see how it plays.

[Blanka]

Can it be programmed for real-time processing on a GPU?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I wish the page would load.. Looks like there are some interesting examples there, including comparisons with other existing upscale algorithms:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/index.html

Here's a better mirror of the paper:
http://easy-iphone-unlocking.com/download/pixel.pdf

[RayB]

[Tumerboy]

Cool tech, but am I the only one?

[Blanka]

Amazing results. I still prefer blocky, but this is at least way more interesting than all fancy scaling and tridot emulation. If they manage to make it work real-time, I think it will be a nice option to consider.

[Ginsu Victim]

Not a fan.

[Corbo]

I wonder how this would affect collision detection

[Vigo]

I'm more thinking of usage in illustrator or other vector rendering. Live trace can blow when vectorizing low-rez art, and I can see how one could use this to churn out some sweet, sweet vector video game artwork. 

[Malenko]

Not a fan.

+1 pixel rape.

[mgb]

It kinda reminds me of some of the filters on nes and snes emulators and I find them kinda weird looking

[Billy_Goatfeet]

  Agreed, interesting idea but.....do not want....I love 8-bit just the way it is, blockalicious.

[flashiv]

I like it as a choice.  Eight is great, but this is cool too!

[BobA]

Here are some more examples.

[koolmoecraig]

George Lucas must have provided the funding for this.

[dfmaverick]

It seems to work well on curves, but since the original pixel count is so small, it interprets items that should be square/rectangle (keys on keyboard, computer chip, electircal plug, etc) as curves as well. The overall effect looks nice though.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Now where this could really take off would be combining it with a technique similar to "Hinting" in the font world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting

I'm not sure if the current rendering systems would allow something like this; but you would have to identify sprites/tiles in ram, then apply this scaling process (with optimization 'hints'), and then use the newly generated image data as what actually gets drawn. Obviously someone has to go and 'hint' all of the individual tiles/sprites/etc on a game-by-game basis.. but it's not as though there isn't a fixed set of of roms out there. It's a finite number of tiles, however large it may be.