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Many of you will be too young to know this, but back in the 80s and 90s, pixels weren't even incorrectly "little squares", they were very often "little rectangl

Many of you will be too young to know this, but back in the 80s and 90s, pixels weren't even incorrectly "little squares", they were very often "little rectangles". Your display was almost always 4:3, but the resolution of your screen was very often not 4:3, and so if you needed to display squares or perfect circles, you needed to compensate for that. This is why the Utah teapot looks squashed, compared to its real-life counterpart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot

physicles 4y ago
Had a flashback to QBasic screen mode 8, which had a resolution of 640x200. Mode 9, 640x350, was also useful because it was the highest resolution you could get while having more than one back buffer.
- achr2 4y ago
  I had the same thought. I really yearn for a simple real-time OS machine to play with and relive my early DOS experiences.
codetrotter 4y ago
> the Utah teapot looks squashed, compared to its real-life counterpart That’s quite interesting indeed! I was wondering if it’s possible to buy a teapot similar to the original real life one still. According to someone on Reddit, it’s still being sold https://www.reddit.com/r/computergraphics/comments/8nmhky/comment/dzxcji5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/computergraphics/comments/8nmhky/co... The website where it is being sold: https://frieslandversand.de/teekanne-1-4l-weiss-utah-teapot https://frieslandversand.de/teekanne-1-4l-weiss-utah-teapot Wikipedia also says: > The original teapot the Utah teapot was based on is still available from Friesland Porzellan, once part of the German Melitta group. Originally it was given the rather plain name Haushaltsteekanne ('household teapot'); the company only found out about their product's reputation in 2017, whereupon they officially renamed it "Utah Teapot". It is available in three different sizes and various colors; the one Martin Newell had used is the white "1,4L Utah Teapot". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#Original_teapot_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#Original_teapot_mo...
yesenadam 4y ago
> This is why the Utah teapot looks squashed Although it says on that page: "The real teapot is 33% taller (ratio 4:3) than the computer model. Jim Blinn stated that he scaled the model on the vertical axis during a demo in the lab to demonstrate that they could manipulate it. They preferred the appearance of this new version and decided to save the file out of that preference."
mschuster91 4y ago
> Some programming libraries, such as the OpenGL Utility Toolkit,[2] even have functions dedicated to drawing teapots. The joys of having a decent library environment, makes setting up a Hello World example really easy.

physicles 4y ago

Had a flashback to QBasic screen mode 8, which had a resolution of 640x200. Mode 9, 640x350, was also useful because it was the highest resolution you could get while having more than one back buffer.

achr2 4y ago
I had the same thought. I really yearn for a simple real-time OS machine to play with and relive my early DOS experiences.

codetrotter 4y ago

> the Utah teapot looks squashed, compared to its real-life counterpart That’s quite interesting indeed! I was wondering if it’s possible to buy a teapot similar to the original real life one still. According to someone on Reddit, it’s still being sold https://www.reddit.com/r/computergraphics/comments/8nmhky/comment/dzxcji5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/computergraphics/comments/8nmhky/co... The website where it is being sold: https://frieslandversand.de/teekanne-1-4l-weiss-utah-teapot https://frieslandversand.de/teekanne-1-4l-weiss-utah-teapot Wikipedia also says: > The original teapot the Utah teapot was based on is still available from Friesland Porzellan, once part of the German Melitta group. Originally it was given the rather plain name Haushaltsteekanne ('household teapot'); the company only found out about their product's reputation in 2017, whereupon they officially renamed it "Utah Teapot". It is available in three different sizes and various colors; the one Martin Newell had used is the white "1,4L Utah Teapot". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#Original_teapot_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#Original_teapot_mo...

yesenadam 4y ago

> This is why the Utah teapot looks squashed Although it says on that page: "The real teapot is 33% taller (ratio 4:3) than the computer model. Jim Blinn stated that he scaled the model on the vertical axis during a demo in the lab to demonstrate that they could manipulate it. They preferred the appearance of this new version and decided to save the file out of that preference."

mschuster91 4y ago

> Some programming libraries, such as the OpenGL Utility Toolkit,[2] even have functions dedicated to drawing teapots. The joys of having a decent library environment, makes setting up a Hello World example really easy.