It’s also not realistic, in one landscape the billboard is taller than a 9 story building.

Human pixel art tends to be very deliberate about the exact colors of every pixel and their placement tends to follow idealized (but not necessarily geometric) shapes.

The last time I saw dithering this sloppy was decades ago when people would scan photos as low color images. It is its own vibe, but it's a cold and rough one. These artifacts feel more "realistic", but it felt like slop back then too.

[0]: https://dukope.com/devlogs/obra-dinn/tig-32/

They are. And they are charging $19 to buy AI generated art (https://safaelmali.gumroad.com/l/lofi-cities-complete-collec...).

Turns out part of the appeal for me is that it seems handmade.

Ads are the worst and they're antithetical to the vibe of something like this

If it's an actual ad.. You'd get more goodwill (and maybe clicks) out of a tiny 'if you appreciate this maybe check out product hunt to support me' message somewhere. At least it's not manipulative that way.

Crazy times, man.

Only on HN there can be a single pixel that is misplaced or off and it causes ONE person to get upset about it.

This is completely petty. Just stop.

> Put your café, shop, studio or brand on the billboard in Paris: drawn by hand in the same pixel-art style, and glowing in the scene while people study, work and unwind to the music.

It's clear this is a money-making endeavor, not something created out of passion or goodness of heart. And not art.

This is a passion project for me. I’m paying to keep it running, and the billboards are meant to help cover those costs. I’ll add an option to hide them.

Actually, shouldn't it be possible to auto-generate any city via AI on demand?

There's definitely some manual curation. They even have assets that are clearly being placed into the scene, like the boats moving in the water.

You could theoretically generate all possible animated sprites (birds, people, vehicles, etc.) for use in any given cityscape, but automatically segmenting/detecting the different valid "paths/waypoints" where those assets should be placed would probably end up looking pretty janky.

Honestly I was blown away, it is one capability that blindsided me. I haven't been this surprised by a capability lift in a long time.

- parallax, which might be some clouds moving in the background.

- weather effects which is mostly just an overlay

- animated sprites that interact with, or at least move along, the different sections of the static scene.

It'd be neat to see how well it could recreate some of the larger set pieces like Westminster palace.

I've definitely seen some pretty impressive automated AI voxel stuff (and that was 6 months ago) and that's having to deal an extra dimension. [1]

Personally I still don’t see a situation in which you could do it completely hands-off though. I think you’d end up with some pretty good scenes and some really terrible scenes requiring post-adjustments. It would be an interesting experiment at any rate!

[1] - https://github.com/Ammaar-Alam/minebench

https://safaelmali.gumroad.com/l/lofi-cities-complete-collec...

The main conclusion I've come to is that it's less that I dislike AI art inherently, and rather that I value the human decisions in media that I personally care about, and AI media threatens both its creation and how much other people value such things.

or i don't know if you are but this is how i think i feel a lot of the time haha

https://lospec.com/gallery/sorting:likes/time:all

With AI, instead you feel a connection to the sum of all humanity.

Pixel art cityscapes is also such a small niche, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some "reference images" from popular pixel artists in the pipeline.

Why do companies like Apple & Microsoft sterilize themselves so?

There's already subtle parallax in iOS etc.

Animated wallpapers could be subtle, like raindrops, or animate only when interacted with, when you're bored or waiting for the AI to finish a run etc. :)

Stated preference perhaps, but unlikely revealed preference.

Depends on context, but for a computer on which you're doing work, moving wallpaper is usually a net negative for usability while you're actively working, though the magnitude depends heavily on the animation.

The problem is primarily peripheral attention. Motions is a strong pre-attentive visual signal: your visual system detects it without you deliberately deciding to look at it. One a laptop where you're close to the display and spending long periods concentrating on text, code, documents, etc., any visible animated region around or through windows can create low-level competition for attention.

A good compromise is wallpaper motion during transitions or stillness during work.

Broader UI principle: motion should explain change, not create change to be noticed.

No, you don't know me, or other people.

I want every fucking thing moving at all fucking times. It's okay.

Btw for other people who love some motion in their occupation:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1516350/Textreme_2/

https://ash-k.itch.io/textreme-2

Of course, ymmv. But give it a try.

Either way, really nicely made, I love it! Small change request: adjust the CSS to make the controls look less vibecode-y.

https://cindori.com/backdrop

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop

    https://loficities.com/tokyo/?obs&weather=leaves

[1]: https://sindresorhus.com/plash

I would have been very impressed if it made pixel art for cities on demand. If I were able to put in my hometown and see a delightful pixel art memory, I'd swoon and point to it and say "wow wee LLMs are pretty dope aren't they", but instead I'm just thinking this is yet another shallow project which will be abandoned tomorrow.

I first saw Paris from inside the room, and only later realized that 90% of the cities seem to be outdoors. It did make me kind of miss the indoor theming of the local area.

Also make me think how cool it would be to be able to toggle between being indoors or on the balcony. Shift the volume of the music vs the weather, maybe add some city sounds and shift them as well. Finally, it means you could have twice as much visual variety for only 50% more art.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_space

I think its easier to sell it as actual art/non-slop when you take some time to remove what is generic across newer LLM sessions.

Once the technology gets good enough and people can't tell it apart and start to get used to generated content like this, it will perhaps start to make sense to provide this kind of effort if it's still relevant.

When/if people start rewarding disclosure it will make sense to do this, otherwise you are asking me to pay for this abstract principle out of my own pocket.

https://yamanote-window-loop.aljosa-asanovic.chatgpt.site/v3

Sound on for nostalgia if you've been to Tokyo.

Edit: forgot I had added a little behind the scenes page

https://yamanote-window-loop.aljosa-asanovic.chatgpt.site/ma...

So GPT 5.6 Sol using GPT images 2.0 (fake transparency by generating pink which it then removed) and it deployed to ChatGPT sites which I also wanted to just see in action for fun. It's basically just CloudFlare with D1 underneath or something.

So tldr yeah just generated with the built in image gen, it does have an advantage there over Claude. With images 2.5 I imagine the result would be more consistent.

This is almost like a reflex, I am not sure why, because when I look, I don't see any pattern...

Anyone else have the same?

For any city, a thunderstorm or light drizzle option would be very moody.

I'm not just flogging a dead horse here - they don't care how good the search results for these types of queries are, they need to be just good enough to stop you from moving to search via Perplexity, Chatgpt, Claude etc. They also need to be as cheap as possible to generate.

Google makes money when you search for things to buy which is why they'll give you an ad-free experience on things that they never made much money off anyways (eg "why is the sky blue?") - they want you to be around when you search for something they can (eg "jewellery"). Note that they never give you AI slop when you're doing a product search.

Unfortunately people both expect answers phrased in response to their questions, and people have generally poor skills at picking up on authoritative-sounding bullshit. Also if they give you "an answer" and stop you from moving to another site with more detail (and possibly ads from someone else!) you're more likely to ask follow up questions on google.

https://www.effectgames.com/demos/worlds/