A few months ago — many apologies! — via Twitter, Jonathan Williams brought a rather interesting image to my attention:

AI upscaling — especially using GPUs to handle the processing, although there are (somewhat slower) methods that utilize CPUs — of 2D textures from old games has been something of a hot topic, lately. And I’ll admit that I had wondered whether any of the Ultima games could possibly benefit from it, although most of them are probably too low-resolution to really make it work. I suppose a fan project like the long-dormant Beautiful Britannia could use AI upscaling as a shortcut for converting the lowest-resolution textures in Ultima 9 into higher-resolution textures that would still be supported by the engine.

But if anything, a project like Unerworld Exporter — which essentially automates the porting of Ultima Underworld into the Unity engine — might be the best application of this technology. This is aimless speculation on my part, of course, but I wonder if as part of the export process, this sort of texture upscaling could be applied? It’s likely way more complicated than that, and it seems almost a pipe dream to think that there could be a one-click solution for suddenly having an HD remake of Ultima Underworld at my fingertips.

But aimless though it may be, it’s fun to speculate. And as the image above shows, the game would certainly look really, really great at a much higher resolution.