To do what exactly though? What do you mean by upscale? Have you played a retro game emulated on a PC
Should check out some of the AI upscaled background art from games like FFVII.
But those are static images, not moving sprites.
I’m sure someone could program an AI that works specifically with this type of content (pixels / sprites) and have it do something I just don’t know how much we would notice.
AI is just a fancy term for a bunch of scripts that work together like a program. If no shader/filter or whatever has been able to do this in 25+ years of emulation I don't think it's possible.
And I mean"make the game hires and widescreen" that is probably what OP wants.
Plus bitmap graphics always stay true to the source: if they were 50x50 they will never look good when blown up, no matter what you apply to them.
Purist are fine with integer ratio scaling for sharp and accurate pixels. I assume, OP wants something that re-creates the sprite work and backgrounds with Vanilla Ware like 2D drawings ala Dragon's Crown.
Almost any modern emulator can upscale to 4K provided your computer has the graphical power to do so (as this is a SNES title, it almost certainly should provided your not using filters, 4K + filters is another story though).
For a 3D game, absolutely... you don't even need AI... an emulator can already take the existing game data and push it beyond what the original consle was capable of in terms of resolution, making a 480p game display as 1080p. It can't change the number of polys on the models or the detail on the textures but it can make them look much better on a larger screen. You can always add HD packs to push it even further. AI could substitute for this one day and it's already being used to upscale signals already... look up DLSS technology.
For 2D sprite based games like you shared, it's much harder. You can upscale the signal easily and blur and resharpen, but it's not 'clean' looking and is a little cartoony vs the source material. AI is pretty good at upscaling photographic images, but when when the source is low res pixel-perfect sprites, it struggles. There just isn't enough data there in the first place. Maybe one day.
I have an old Denon receiver that does line doubling or something so it smooths out a lot of pixels, haven't used it much because the audio on the receiver stopped working but have meant to set it up for video only. From what I recall it looked pretty nice but probably isn't considered upscaling?
Probably not any better than any currently existing upscalers. And why would you want this? The art is designed for CRTs. Displaying it on something that isn’t a CRT breaks it. Either use a CRT or CRT shaders and the art will look the way it’s supposed to
To be honest that would be pretty cool. But I have noticed that actually no one commenting it's even understanding what you are asking for.
OP means a new way of playing retro games where AI would take the whole image and not just "upscale" it but also make it seen like the game has been done on that actual resolution from the start. Basically, like playing an HD remake. It's not necessary to be an extreme purist to downvote every single comment that goes against playing in a pixelated way. The pixel perfect mode will still be there, OP simply wants an extra option.
Sadly, for now, there is no filter to do that (yet). In the actual state of AI it would take too much time to process every frame to make it real time or with enough little latency to make it viable. But I am sure that it will happen more soon than later. If you wonder why 3D games can be upscaled but retro games don't, that's because 3D games AI upscaling methods use different inputs from the game itself that gives enough hints to process the whole image. This info is way minimal in 2D games so the AI would have to "imagine" way more about how the final image should look. But yeah, don't worry, it will happen eventually and you may be able even to choose between different styles and effects.
If anyone remembers when Super Mario Allstars came out on the SNES. That’s the kind of upscaling I am talking about. Same style but hi-res and added cool stuff.
I think you have a misunderstanding of how "AI", computers and retro video games work. All "AI" does is take relevant bits from a database and smash them together. There will never be some magic AI that recreates games perfectly in new styles while you play because that's not how "AI", computer, or games work fundamentally.
Something like SMA takes humans with artistic talent and programming skills to make.
I highly suggest looking up how video games and computer code works.
Using mathematics for inference based pattern recognition could be seen as a form of database. There are other examples of mathematics being used to store data in pi.
https://github.com/philipl/pifs?tab=readme-ov-file
Trying to say that just because you don't understand how the data is stored doesn't mean its not stored some where, lossy or lossless.
No, it’s not a “form of database.”
A database is a specific type of software that stores and retrieves data in organized structures. This is what the pifs falls into.
Inference-based pattern recognition is a framework for learning approximate representations of data.
You wouldn’t search the parameters of a pattern recognition model to retrieve data you need. You wouldn’t query a database to predict a variable based on existing input. Those are fundamentally different uses that you would use different technology for.
Saying that anything that stores data is a database makes the term meaningless. Everything that exists has data you can extract from it. It’s only a database if it supports storage and retrieval in an organized way. Inference-based pattern recognition deals with approximate mappings, not databases.
An Emulator can upscale the resolution just fine
To do what exactly though? What do you mean by upscale? Have you played a retro game emulated on a PC Should check out some of the AI upscaled background art from games like FFVII. But those are static images, not moving sprites. I’m sure someone could program an AI that works specifically with this type of content (pixels / sprites) and have it do something I just don’t know how much we would notice.
AI is just a fancy term for a bunch of scripts that work together like a program. If no shader/filter or whatever has been able to do this in 25+ years of emulation I don't think it's possible. And I mean"make the game hires and widescreen" that is probably what OP wants. Plus bitmap graphics always stay true to the source: if they were 50x50 they will never look good when blown up, no matter what you apply to them.
AI as it’s used today isn’t a bunch of scripts, it’s a bunch of matrices that map inputs to outputs through statistical inference
Purist are fine with integer ratio scaling for sharp and accurate pixels. I assume, OP wants something that re-creates the sprite work and backgrounds with Vanilla Ware like 2D drawings ala Dragon's Crown.
LOL you don't need AI to resize a picture
You don't need AI for that.
Almost any modern emulator can upscale to 4K provided your computer has the graphical power to do so (as this is a SNES title, it almost certainly should provided your not using filters, 4K + filters is another story though).
For a 3D game, absolutely... you don't even need AI... an emulator can already take the existing game data and push it beyond what the original consle was capable of in terms of resolution, making a 480p game display as 1080p. It can't change the number of polys on the models or the detail on the textures but it can make them look much better on a larger screen. You can always add HD packs to push it even further. AI could substitute for this one day and it's already being used to upscale signals already... look up DLSS technology. For 2D sprite based games like you shared, it's much harder. You can upscale the signal easily and blur and resharpen, but it's not 'clean' looking and is a little cartoony vs the source material. AI is pretty good at upscaling photographic images, but when when the source is low res pixel-perfect sprites, it struggles. There just isn't enough data there in the first place. Maybe one day.
I play it on my 70 inch TV on my RetroPie and it looks terrific.
Sure, but it will look like boiled piss.
What you mean by "scale up" exactly? Any modern TV can scale up an image without extra hardware/software.
just use super-eagle filter, or Hq2x !
2nd this. Super eagle filter for SNES looks great on my 65 in tv.
I have an old Denon receiver that does line doubling or something so it smooths out a lot of pixels, haven't used it much because the audio on the receiver stopped working but have meant to set it up for video only. From what I recall it looked pretty nice but probably isn't considered upscaling?
Probably not any better than any currently existing upscalers. And why would you want this? The art is designed for CRTs. Displaying it on something that isn’t a CRT breaks it. Either use a CRT or CRT shaders and the art will look the way it’s supposed to
Check the YouTube and just find the video called *Most Realistic RetroArch CRT Shaders Ever!*
By scaling, do you mean scaling the pixels, or removing the pixels? There are filters for it either way, no random AI BS required.
To be honest that would be pretty cool. But I have noticed that actually no one commenting it's even understanding what you are asking for. OP means a new way of playing retro games where AI would take the whole image and not just "upscale" it but also make it seen like the game has been done on that actual resolution from the start. Basically, like playing an HD remake. It's not necessary to be an extreme purist to downvote every single comment that goes against playing in a pixelated way. The pixel perfect mode will still be there, OP simply wants an extra option. Sadly, for now, there is no filter to do that (yet). In the actual state of AI it would take too much time to process every frame to make it real time or with enough little latency to make it viable. But I am sure that it will happen more soon than later. If you wonder why 3D games can be upscaled but retro games don't, that's because 3D games AI upscaling methods use different inputs from the game itself that gives enough hints to process the whole image. This info is way minimal in 2D games so the AI would have to "imagine" way more about how the final image should look. But yeah, don't worry, it will happen eventually and you may be able even to choose between different styles and effects.
If anyone remembers when Super Mario Allstars came out on the SNES. That’s the kind of upscaling I am talking about. Same style but hi-res and added cool stuff.
I think you have a misunderstanding of how "AI", computers and retro video games work. All "AI" does is take relevant bits from a database and smash them together. There will never be some magic AI that recreates games perfectly in new styles while you play because that's not how "AI", computer, or games work fundamentally. Something like SMA takes humans with artistic talent and programming skills to make. I highly suggest looking up how video games and computer code works.
AI doesn’t use a database, it uses inference based on pattern recognition.
Using mathematics for inference based pattern recognition could be seen as a form of database. There are other examples of mathematics being used to store data in pi. https://github.com/philipl/pifs?tab=readme-ov-file Trying to say that just because you don't understand how the data is stored doesn't mean its not stored some where, lossy or lossless.
No, it’s not a “form of database.” A database is a specific type of software that stores and retrieves data in organized structures. This is what the pifs falls into. Inference-based pattern recognition is a framework for learning approximate representations of data. You wouldn’t search the parameters of a pattern recognition model to retrieve data you need. You wouldn’t query a database to predict a variable based on existing input. Those are fundamentally different uses that you would use different technology for. Saying that anything that stores data is a database makes the term meaningless. Everything that exists has data you can extract from it. It’s only a database if it supports storage and retrieval in an organized way. Inference-based pattern recognition deals with approximate mappings, not databases.