It feels bolted on to an otherwise cool thing. Even angling the board, or smudging, dimming color, localizing language, etc. All would make it feel like it fits.
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but the way the dithering is used feels very "generated" and chaotic.
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.
For an example of just how much of a rabbit hole this is, Lucas Pope's forum post[0] about the dithering in Obra Dinn shows how much time can be spent on getting it right.
There's a lot to like here, but too AI-generated for me. The pixel art for Tokyo & Hong Kong don't use proper Chinese/Japanese characters. The pulsating badges in the non-pixel UI are also pretty AI-indicative in a way that is distracting.
Gorgeous, very well executed. I'm guessing the primary request will be more cities but I'll deviate and say I'd love to see more views as well. Would be nice to have the same set of cities by I can see it from a studio view same way it is in the Paris view. Or from an office. Or a cafe.
A café or apartment view would give each city a different atmosphere. Paris seems to resonate for that reason. I’ll add indoor views to the roadmap—thanks for the suggestion!
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.
Maybe to a degree but this isn’t just somebody using Seeddance to generate a first-frame-and-last-frame video loop and calling it a day.
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.
Maybe??.. Opus 5.5 is a giant step function up with "manual illustration". Quite a bit better than Astra. It is entirely possible to get this quality of animation "hand drawn" from Opus 5.5...
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.
I haven't had a chance to play with Opus 5.5 yet, but I guess if there were a way to generate each of the pieces (aka the layers) then it might be possible:
- 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!
strange to me that "lofi" has graduated from low fidelity to AI generated downtempo music, which I assume (like the art) is based on the work of real artists.
Thanks for flagging this. The music is composed and synthesized procedurally in your browser using the Web Audio API. Which city and music style were you listening to? That would help me track down the dissonant chord progressions.
Yes, the city images and video loops are AI-generated. The music is synthesized live in the browser using the Web Audio API, rather than played from a prerecorded playlist.
There's a lot of AI on the author's github, so I would assume so. I have no idea how I feel about these sorts of things. On the one hand I think it's objectively a super neat idea, but it makes me sad that a human (probably) didn't make the art/songs.
I use a compiler to perform a task. I don’t use pixel art to perform a task, other than to feel connection to another human —- something AI makes more challenging.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I feel very averse to consuming AI media, but it's not super obvious to me why. In some sense, I agree with what you're saying, but in reality no pixel art of a city I've never been to would elicit that feeling in me. Maybe I would feel differently if it were art of the city I live in and had some pixels dedicated to specific things I think are cool about the city, but for this website in particular it could be the best pixel art of SF ever made and I don't think it would be all that meaningful to me.
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.
maybe you are MOSTLY judging what you perceive to be the artist's options and then decisions, and with most AI art, it's super easy to judge both of those quickly and accurately -- they had a billion options, and they chose a really lazy one.
or i don't know if you are but this is how i think i feel a lot of the time haha
I mean pixel art is kind of weird, in that I rarely just look at a single screen of pixel art and say, wow, I feel more connected now. It’s often taken in context of a larger whole, like a game or animation where the artist is usually trying to express something, and the specific art is some small part of the overall expression. It’s kind of like how no individual still image from Spirited Away will convey the meaning of the whole movie.
Ah that's a bummer. I'm unsure if this is gonna change over time, but it entirely tanks my enjoyment of any visual art project to know it was generated.
Just tested and this works great on macOS with Plash [1] by Sindre Sorhus. I couldn't find too many URL parameters to control it, but the FAQ does mention an ?obs parameter to hide the interface by default and ?weather=... to choose the weather. This URL in Plash works as described:
https://loficities.com/tokyo/?obs&weather=leaves
I was also able to omit ?obs and use the website interface controls to configure it via Plash browsing mode and then the interface went away after a moment of inactivity.
When using my 32 inch screen sometimes I set the wallpaper to a random walk video in YouTube and it works fantastically. I know that it is counter intuitive, but the contrast between real and moving elements and static and almost flat Windows makes for a nice experience. And helps fighting text editing fatigue.
That's up to personal preference. Just like with static wallpapers, some people like single subtle colors, some people like noisy multicolored wallpapers.
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. :)
I was having a very similar thought - finally a nice use case for HTML wallpapers like Windows used to have them. I bet that there's a trick to have this as a desktop background in Wayland, but I'm too lazy to find out right now.
Either way, really nicely made, I love it! Small change request: adjust the CSS to make the controls look less vibecode-y.
The product hunt ad is breaking the immersion for me. I know that most cities have ads but still, I prefer ad free pixel art.
It’s also not realistic, in one landscape the billboard is taller than a 9 story building.
Would an option to hide it address this for you, or does its appearance need work even when enabled?
option to hide will be nice.
It feels bolted on to an otherwise cool thing. Even angling the board, or smudging, dimming color, localizing language, etc. All would make it feel like it fits.
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but the way the dithering is used feels very "generated" and chaotic.
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.
For an example of just how much of a rabbit hole this is, Lucas Pope's forum post[0] about the dithering in Obra Dinn shows how much time can be spent on getting it right.
[0]: https://dukope.com/devlogs/obra-dinn/tig-32/
> Created with AI-assisted tools, curated and prepared as ready-to-use video loops.
They are. And they are charging $19 to buy AI generated art (https://safaelmali.gumroad.com/l/lofi-cities-complete-collec...).
Bought you a copy!
Yes, that’s the tell tale sign of AI generative pixel art. AI can’t be consistent with the pixels. Looks ok sometimes but never pops.
There's a lot to like here, but too AI-generated for me. The pixel art for Tokyo & Hong Kong don't use proper Chinese/Japanese characters. The pulsating badges in the non-pixel UI are also pretty AI-indicative in a way that is distracting.
Gorgeous, very well executed. I'm guessing the primary request will be more cities but I'll deviate and say I'd love to see more views as well. Would be nice to have the same set of cities by I can see it from a studio view same way it is in the Paris view. Or from an office. Or a cafe.
A café or apartment view would give each city a different atmosphere. Paris seems to resonate for that reason. I’ll add indoor views to the roadmap—thanks for the suggestion!
Very cool project. I love the tour aspect of it!
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.
So cool. Add Los Angeles, Cape Town, Florence, Cairo, Athens, Vancouver, São Paulo.
Actually, shouldn't it be possible to auto-generate any city via AI on demand?
Maybe to a degree but this isn’t just somebody using Seeddance to generate a first-frame-and-last-frame video loop and calling it a day.
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.
Maybe??.. Opus 5.5 is a giant step function up with "manual illustration". Quite a bit better than Astra. It is entirely possible to get this quality of animation "hand drawn" from Opus 5.5...
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.
I haven't had a chance to play with Opus 5.5 yet, but I guess if there were a way to generate each of the pieces (aka the layers) then it might be possible:
- 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
strange to me that "lofi" has graduated from low fidelity to AI generated downtempo music, which I assume (like the art) is based on the work of real artists.
Is the music AI-generated? Because it's pretty hard to listen to. Weird dissonant chord progressions.
Thanks for flagging this. The music is composed and synthesized procedurally in your browser using the Web Audio API. Which city and music style were you listening to? That would help me track down the dissonant chord progressions.
Nice idea, but the rain sound (at least on my system) isn't rain - it's just white noise?
Thanks for flagging this. Which browser and device are you using? Does it sound that way with the music paused too?
White noise is better than the repetitive and generic synthetic music I got
This is a vibe! Is this pixel art AI generated?
Yes, the city images and video loops are AI-generated. The music is synthesized live in the browser using the Web Audio API, rather than played from a prerecorded playlist.
There's a lot of AI on the author's github, so I would assume so. I have no idea how I feel about these sorts of things. On the one hand I think it's objectively a super neat idea, but it makes me sad that a human (probably) didn't make the art/songs.
A human did --- just indirectly, in the same way as using a compiler or assembler instead of writing each byte by hand.
I use a compiler to perform a task. I don’t use pixel art to perform a task, other than to feel connection to another human —- something AI makes more challenging.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I feel very averse to consuming AI media, but it's not super obvious to me why. In some sense, I agree with what you're saying, but in reality no pixel art of a city I've never been to would elicit that feeling in me. Maybe I would feel differently if it were art of the city I live in and had some pixels dedicated to specific things I think are cool about the city, but for this website in particular it could be the best pixel art of SF ever made and I don't think it would be all that meaningful to me.
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.
maybe you are MOSTLY judging what you perceive to be the artist's options and then decisions, and with most AI art, it's super easy to judge both of those quickly and accurately -- they had a billion options, and they chose a really lazy one.
or i don't know if you are but this is how i think i feel a lot of the time haha
I mean pixel art is kind of weird, in that I rarely just look at a single screen of pixel art and say, wow, I feel more connected now. It’s often taken in context of a larger whole, like a game or animation where the artist is usually trying to express something, and the specific art is some small part of the overall expression. It’s kind of like how no individual still image from Spirited Away will convey the meaning of the whole movie.
other than to feel connection to another human
With AI, instead you feel a connection to the sum of all humanity.
Yes according to the author - the assets were created with AI tooling.
https://safaelmali.gumroad.com/l/lofi-cities-complete-collec...
Ah that's a bummer. I'm unsure if this is gonna change over time, but it entirely tanks my enjoyment of any visual art project to know it was generated.
This would be cool as a Roku channel
Love it! Really cool idea!
I love the FM synth in the music. Some of the patches from Sonic games can be heard.
Man, wish we had dynamic wallpapers like this, and we could have had it decades ago.
Why do companies like Apple & Microsoft sterilize themselves so?
Just tested and this works great on macOS with Plash [1] by Sindre Sorhus. I couldn't find too many URL parameters to control it, but the FAQ does mention an ?obs parameter to hide the interface by default and ?weather=... to choose the weather. This URL in Plash works as described:
I was also able to omit ?obs and use the website interface controls to configure it via Plash browsing mode and then the interface went away after a moment of inactivity.[1]: https://sindresorhus.com/plash
Thanks for testing this with Plash and sharing the setup! That’s useful for the others asking about desktop wallpapers.
This was already a thing almost 3 decades ago. Active Desktop [0] was just a web page displayed instead of the wallpaper image.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
Wallpapers that move would make for poor usability.
When using my 32 inch screen sometimes I set the wallpaper to a random walk video in YouTube and it works fantastically. I know that it is counter intuitive, but the contrast between real and moving elements and static and almost flat Windows makes for a nice experience. And helps fighting text editing fatigue.
Of course, ymmv. But give it a try.
That's up to personal preference. Just like with static wallpapers, some people like single subtle colors, some people like noisy multicolored wallpapers.
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. :)
I was having a very similar thought - finally a nice use case for HTML wallpapers like Windows used to have them. I bet that there's a trick to have this as a desktop background in Wayland, but I'm too lazy to find out right now.
Either way, really nicely made, I love it! Small change request: adjust the CSS to make the controls look less vibecode-y.
While it's not free or a first party offering, I've had great success with Cindori Backdrop:
https://cindori.com/backdrop
So cool