AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 1004113 times)

Offline Rosse

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 182
  • Karma: +2/-0
    • ssero
    • bluecrystalrod
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1640 on: July 08, 2010, 09:54:34 am
Found an interesting article from the inventor of the "pixel":
Quote
Squares was the logical thing to do,” Kirsch says. “Of course, the logical thing was not the only possibility … but we used squares. It was something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.

He proposes a different form of "pixels", similar to what some do with C64 characters to create pictures.



http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/smoothing-square-pixels

Offline Helm

  • Moderator
  • 0110
  • *
  • Posts: 5159
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • Asides-Bsides

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1641 on: July 08, 2010, 01:11:04 pm
Fascinating reading. It's interesting he thinks the pixel was a mistake. All I can say is: thank you for your mistake!

Offline Jakten

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • The Bionic Vapor Boy
    • View Profile
    • Levitating Rocksquatch

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1642 on: July 08, 2010, 07:13:42 pm
What else could they have used? I can't imagine using circles because how would you fill in the empty spaces, though rectangles would work its essentially long pixels. Maybe hexagons? I thought about this before and I can't see how you could use anything else without having weird problems, at least on low resolutions (good luck drawing a L on a hexagon grid).

It's weird that he hates the square pixels so much but the program he made is pretty awesome and it's funny because the result reminds me a lot of some of your (Helm) and Ptoings pixel art. The way you drew the recent Nietzsche portrait looks pretty similar to this only more refined. I wish he released the program because I'd like to play with it. It would be interesting to see how it interprets some of the pixels I've done.

Offline ptoing

  • 0101
  • ****
  • Posts: 3063
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • variegated quadrangle arranger
    • the_ptoing
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/2191.htm
    • View Profile
    • Perpetually inactive website

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1643 on: July 08, 2010, 08:19:34 pm
I guess with clever masking and small enough fields of phosphor or LEDs or whatever you could make groups of 4 triangles arranged in a square like X, that way each square could have 4 different colours if needed and they would be sharp, but it could also be used in a pixel like way.

All in all I do not see the problem with pixels whatsoever, especially now that resolutions are so high that you pretty much do not even see them most of the time at 1x for anything else than pixel art.

I like my pixels.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Jad

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1048
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1644 on: July 09, 2010, 07:02:25 am
I like my pixels.

Me too! I like you also. I like this forum dedicated to the pixels I like.

mmm circlejerk
' _ '

Offline Tourist

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 376
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1645 on: July 09, 2010, 07:42:03 pm
I goofed with this a bit.  It's difficult to compare using more dots vs trying to encode a shape parameter.  The image posted above has one image with 6x6 blocks of one color vs one image with 6x6 blocks containing 2 colors and a shape.  One simply has more data than the other.

The idea of trading off color data for shape data is interesting.  It's what pixel artists already do to deal with jaggies (AA and clean lines).  Something like this would store that information directly.  Or maybe just process source data with an eye towards removing the jags. 

Here is something trying to go the other way.  It's a sprite from Ultima IV.  The image on the right looks worse, but it also uses less data, so it's hard to compare properly.  With 12 extra bits of info available, there could be a third color in each large block, or quite a few more shapes.



Tourist

Offline Rydin

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 925
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • ...zzzt...
    • @thickDumps
    • View Profile
    • thickDumps

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1646 on: July 09, 2010, 09:04:50 pm
I want to see what a really high resolution image (at least wallpaper size or bigger) would look like with these dynamically shaped pixels.
Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Offline Tourist

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 376
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1647 on: July 10, 2010, 12:31:59 am
@Rydin: I think it would look something like the face in the image above. 

I worked on the sprite a little bit more, chopping down the color count, generating a second image that was offset from the first, and then combining them (which bumps the color count back up).  The result is not that good.  I think I'm done with this. 



Tourist

Offline Mathias

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1797
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • Goodbye.
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/9542.htm
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1648 on: July 10, 2010, 01:36:38 am
I hate it

Offline Conzeit

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1448
  • Karma: +3/-0
  • Camus
    • conzeit
    • View Profile
    • CONZEIT

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #1649 on: July 12, 2010, 02:07:18 am
mmm squarejerk

fixeded


NOW TO A COMPLETELY UNRELATED TOPIC (to do with this site)
alright....I just used IE tab for the first time in months...and I noticed the banners work JUST FINE in there, while in regular firefox 3.6 I'm only seeing the donation button =/. anyone know WTF? I wonder if it's just my firefox that's getting it wrong cause I'm not even blocking anything on this site with AdBlockPlus  or Ghostery or NoScript or ANYTHING
« Last Edit: July 12, 2010, 02:09:58 am by Conceit »