(redirected from Nearest neighbor interpolation) Also found in: Wikipedia.
Also called "nearest neighbor," it is the simplest form of texture mapping, which is often associated with low-end games and applications that do not demand much realism. An algorithm is used to map a screen pixel to the corresponding point on the texture map. The attributes (color, alpha, etc.) of the nearest texel are then directly applied to the screen pixel. The process is repeated for each pixel forming the object being textured. See texture map, bilinear interpolation, trilinear interpolation and MIP mapping.
Unlike other interpolation techniques such as nearest neighbor interpolation and bicubic interpolation, bilinear interpolation uses only the 4 nearest pixel values which are located in diagonal directions from a given pixel in order to find the appropriate color intensity values of that pixel.