[HN Gopher] ASCII 3D Renderer for JavaScript
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       ASCII 3D Renderer for JavaScript
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 85 points
       Date   : 2024-08-10 09:31 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | owenpalmer wrote:
       | Reminds me of https://asciicker.com/.
        
         | lsc4719 wrote:
         | Amazing!
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | This immediately reminded me of this ascii graphics library
       | https://play.ertdfgcvb.xyz/ which I found on HN a while ago
        
       | sukmaagung wrote:
       | So, as long it uses only text, it can be called ASCII art, not
       | just characters from space to tilde (or null to tilde)?
        
         | mock-possum wrote:
         | Colloquially, yes.
        
         | mxfh wrote:
         | Its just 3 bits white plus those 7 box art chars.
         | 
         | private Shade = '*++'; [1]
         | 
         | Would have expected something more sophisticated, where the
         | shader also looks at subpixels, where it gets the best matching
         | char for the shape and brightness.
         | 
         | Like rastapasta map renderer did with the braille block:
         | 
         | https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39975887
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | https://github.com/kciter/ascii-3d-renderer.js/blob/1f1a8493...
         | [1]
         | 
         | Shades and Box art chars where never part of any ASCII
         | standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
         | 
         | Technically no ASCII but that's just for purists
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art#%22Block_ASCII%22_/_...
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | Yes, sadly this semantic battle has already been lost.
        
       | nox101 wrote:
       | I'm pretty sure it's rendering strings but there's also the
       | technique of post processing on the GPU like this
       | 
       | https://threejs.org/examples/?q=asc#webgl_effects_ascii
        
         | LukaD wrote:
         | This video goes into depth about ASCII rendering as a post
         | processing effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg40RWiaHRY
        
           | EGreg wrote:
           | "goes into depth"
           | 
           | I see what you did there
           | 
           | (without intending to do it)
        
           | thih9 wrote:
           | IMHO in this video the end result doesn't qualify as ASCII
           | art - square letters in particular are a deal breaker to me.
           | 
           | It is still a cool shader that turns input into text, even if
           | it doesn't have the ascii art vibe.
        
             | california-og wrote:
             | ASCII just refers to the 7bit standard, so if we are
             | pedantic ASCII art is just art using the printable
             | characters of the 128 code points defined in it. Font size
             | doesn't have anything to do with it. But ASCII art is used
             | as an umbrella term, encompassing a variety of different
             | standards, character sets and fonts. There are a bunch of
             | square ASCII, like PETSCII, ATASCII and even PC ASCII can
             | be rendered with a 8x8 cp437 font. We don't need to
             | gatekeep what "qualifies" as ASCII art.
        
               | thih9 wrote:
               | > There are a bunch of square ASCII, like PETSCII
               | 
               | Note that e.g. PETSCII, while internally 8x8, would be
               | displayed using non-square pixels[1] - also not resulting
               | in square letters.
               | 
               | [1]: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/13871
        
       | gewaltig wrote:
       | My younger self cries out in joy. So 1980s when you could print
       | an ASCII picture of yourself on mugs and Ts
        
         | _the_inflator wrote:
         | BBS vibes as well.
         | 
         | I did quite a lot of printing on dot matrix printers as well.
        
       | agys wrote:
       | Self plug: the "ASCII Playground" has a couple of 3D demos as
       | well!
       | 
       | DOM manipulation is fast enough to allow text output into a PRE
       | element as long as text color is not changed too often (each
       | style change needs the affected chars wrapped into a SPAN).
       | 
       | https://play.ertdfgcvb.xyz
        
         | Xen9 wrote:
         | Anyone who attempts to generate 3-dimensional renders by
         | textual means is living in a state of sin(x).
        
           | rrnechmech wrote:
           | If this is sin, give me chastity and continence, but not yet
           | :)
        
           | agys wrote:
           | Cos(x) players are welcome!
        
             | slowmovintarget wrote:
             | Are we not all sinusoidal in the eyes of the Function?
        
       | MaanuAir wrote:
       | Immediately reminds me of: https://aa-
       | project.sourceforge.net/index.html
        
       | woodrowbarlow wrote:
       | see also: donut.c which renders a 3d spinning torus in ascii.
       | https://www.a1k0n.net/2006/09/15/obfuscated-c-donut.html
       | 
       | explanation with animations:
       | https://www.a1k0n.net/2011/07/20/donut-math.html
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-12 23:01 UTC)