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Comment by echoangle | Hacker News Reader

Very cool effect!

> It may seem odd or arbitrary to use circles instead of just splitting the cell into two rectangles, but using circles will give us more flexibility later on.

I still don’t really understand why the inner part of the rectangle can’t just be split in a 2x3 grid. Did I miss the explanation?

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It's because circles allow for a stagger and overlap as shown later on. It's not really possible to get the same effect from squares.

But it seems like you only need the stagger and overlap because you’re using circles in the first place. Would it look worse if you just divided the rectangle into 6 squares without any gaps or overlap?

I wondered the same thing, but characters usually don't reach the edges, so I guess circles fit the average character better?

My thought exactly. The sampling circles only enable you to (awkwardly) solve a problem that was fabricated by using circles in the first place.

There are many different supersampling patterns you can use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersampling#Supersampling_pa...

A grid can have unwanted aliasing effects. It all depends on the kinds of images you're working with.

I think this is connected to the overlap and offset that are used layer to account for complex or symmetrical letter shapes. If the author had just split the grid, those effects would have been harder to achieve.

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