We're entering an interesting era in terms of game development. Artificial Intelligence now has the capability of re-rendering older games and movies at a much higher resolution than they were originally made, and it can now be done in a relatively short amount of time.
We can see how it all works thanks to Digital Foundry's latest video showcasing Deep Learning AI unleashed on one of the all-time great video game trailers. The Metal Gear Solid 2 trailer from E3 2000 was perhaps that year's best trailer and it certainly helped to sell lots of the recently released PS2 back in the day.
Later, we'd find out the trailer was a bit of a bait and switch as the vast majority of the game centers around Raiden and not Solid Snake, but the trailer itself was still pretty amazing.
As Digital Foundry notes, the quality of their AI upscale was really only possible because Konami released a DVD containing the in-game cutscene rendered at 60 fps and 480p. This gave the Deep Learning AI the best possible starting point for it to blow each frame up to nearly 10 times its original size.
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Normally, expanding this video to 4K would just turn it into a blurry mess, but the Deep Learning AI is able to fill in objects and textures with an unbelievable amount of detail that was never found in the original video. Almost every image is much sharper with a far greater contrast than the original source.
That said, AI isn’t perfect. You can see a few things–like some of the posters and signs hanging from the walls–didn’t really turn out nearly as well as Solid Snake did. And of course, everything is still a 4:3 aspect ratio because the AI can’t outright imagine footage that never existed in the first place.
You can’t quite play Metal Gear Solid 2 in 4K natively, but your best bet is likely to be the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on the Xbox 360. You can play that on the Xbox Series X thanks to backward compatibility,
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