Holy crap this would make a good image compression algorithm. Might be complex to encode, but super small and efficient to decode.
Can we have this, please? Someone?
Can we have this, please? Someone?
Another advantage is that the compressed format would be vectorial instead of raster, so it would provide smooth scaling.
Storing 4 times the X and Y resolution than a 2 bit per pixel jpeg would yield the same compressed data size. (say a 4096x4096 image compared to a 1024x1024 jpeg. Both 256k). That could also be thought of as storing it as scalable 64x64 blocks.
What you end up with could be a fairly minimal way to represent the image.
Though yes, clearly, the amount of processing required to reach that compression is absurd. But then, most ultra-efficient compression algorithms have this problem at least initially.