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I like this one about space combat: Hammer of Thor, Lightning of Zeus

When you're led to expect a certain level of detail, you start noticing (even subconsciously) all the places where it's missing.

I think you're talking about the uncanny valley. It's a problem, but it's not insurmountable- there's no reason why we can't push through to positive reaction side. You're sort of right, EQ2 could avoid the problem by going for a more stylized approach, but that doesn't necessarily mean it needs less detail, less shaders, etc- you can have high detail and not go for absolute realism.

Not really. Contextual menus use the wrong font; menu selections don't blink; default buttons lay corpselike, not pulsing; the preferences are all fucked. Even with OS X-ish themes, things are still just weird enough to feel, well, creepy. You know the uncanny valley? It's like that, with Firefox's strange simulacra of Aqua controls. I don't mean to be negative.

Have a look at this rather in-depth analysis of the topic you mention. Not certain if the author is a post-grad or not. I'm also fairly certain that this is only one of a growing body of works on the subject.

you speak of the uncanny valley, methinks :)

Snow White...
To my understanding snow white wasnt rotoscoped at all, though they did film footage for reference and tried to be too accurate with it to achieve sympathy, which has been obviously abandoned. Although I could be smoking the blue crack about that point.

Filming footage, Rotoscoping, and Reference
Filming footage for reference is a common practice in animation, although these days its normally the animator himself who is filmed doing the action rather than an actor, so he gets just what he wants. Reference differs from rotoscoping in that rotoscoping is tracing the character on top of the live footage (WB's "Anastasia" being the most recent widespread example), where referencing is watching the movements on a tv monitor and just REFERENCING it for the animation instead of directly tracing. For certain type of motions, such as elaborate dances, this brings a beauty to it which otherwise might be lost. Look at the hula sequence in "Lilo & Stitch". Reference. Another advantage of reference, though it takes more time, is that your not limited by the angle your footage was filmed at. Again, in L&S go to the extras on the dvd and you'll see places where the animated hula footage differs from the filmed reference footage.

Vectorizing
Waking Life and Scanner Darkly are more filtered than anything else. They have spiffy software that vectorizes the filmed footage, which they then disconnect and exaggerate to try to enhance some point or another. It's not animation, as animation is to bring to life, it's merely lots of automated vectoring.

My 2c
And now I for my two cents. I found Waking Life to be pretentious and filled with the flavor of pseudo-philosophy found in indy coffee bars where people sing badly, display bad art as "masterpieces", and pretend like they're being profound. It was long and boring, took me multiple sittings to get through, and the random wierdness and stupid vector images made it fall completely in the uncanny valley. I have no interest in seeing this after looking up data about it as it seems to be more of the same. i'm not wasting my time on it.

My apologies for posting anon. This is the first post I've made in /. and probably my last for a while.

It's called the uncanny valley, and you can read more about it here

Parent post: Can't you get skins that make the Linux desktops and apps look like Windows?

My intuition is that this superficial simularity makes the situation worse. A look-alike windows theme will still contain subtle differences that give users the impression they are looking at an ugly knock-off. (We could draw parallels here to the uncanny valley effect.)

Finding the right theme to convert Windows users is tricky. You will get the best results with something that preserves most of the behaviors (esp. button locations/functions on the window frame) of Windows, but that is visually distinct from Windows. You want something that is aesthetically conservative, yet superior. Instead of knock-off, you want "a new computer" [but not something overwrought that looks like an alien console]. Personally, I think Plastik for KDE gets its right (although that screenshot may not do it justice): it's not fancy or ugly, and it has some subtle mouse-over behaviors that make the window system seem... attentive.

Again, this is all intuition: nothing beats actual user research. Also, keep in mind that people who are afraid of computers will have a mental block against trying new things. This is natural: we humans resist situations where our strategic knowledge is no longer valid. Reaching this type of user will require a whole new level of approach beyond making the product act like Windows.

FYI, the reason that you don't want them to be too 'human' is outlined in this treatise called the Uncanny Valley. A rather interesting read for both you and the GPP if you haven't already.

Funny how not even the Wikipedia article mentions what this series is actually about. I'm getting the feeling, from the write-up, that the movie is going to be more technophilia a la Final Fantasy (which, coincidentally enough, is just a re-hash of Cameron's Aliens with some Gaia / New Age junk thrown in to add spice). Isn't there already a live-action Evangelion in the works? I like anime well enough, but does the world really need a spate of live-action adaptations? Have we learned nothing from Fist of the North Star and The Guyver?

Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement. As a gimmick, it already feels played out. Gosh, MORE distracting computer graphics in a movie, you say? More actors making wooden deliveries to green screens and teamsters waving flags for them to react to? Sign me up!

I would rather see CG used in the environment where it really thrives -- animated films. I don't mean that CG should try to emulate reality as closely as possible -- you just end up with The Uncanny Valley, and the animation will displease people without them ever being able to put a finger on why (it will just look "bad").

I think CG has tremendous potential to show us things that can't be emulated in real life -- and make it look better than it ever has before. I don't think re-hashing an anime title is really going to fit that particular bill. Instead, we see people attempting to make CG look as realistic as possible, which has the effect of making it both "unrealistic" (i.e. distinguishable from reality), and kind of banal. Why would I want to see an animated Jonny Quest jumping onto the back of a moving train, when I can see Jackie Chan do it for real?

A lot of animated shows have added CG to the traditional forms of animation, and seen some tremendous success. I'd rather see the technology go in that direction.

"More adult" doesn't necessarily mean "more photorealistic". Pixar seems smart enough to, among other things, stay out of the "uncanny valley".

This is a phenomenon known as the uncanny valley, and there's a good discussion about it here. It's the same thing as Finaly Fantasy: Spirits Within, where the backgrounds were fantastic, the people were "best.... humans.... ever!" and they still looked weird.

I've seen the Polar Express trailer in theaters a couple times, now. Every time I see it I think one thing: Uncanny Valley.

There's been some research on this topic - welcome to the uncanny valley!

To quote the website which discusses Doctor Masahiro Mori's famous theory on why we reject the "nearly human" vs. the "obviously inhuman" - The Uncanny Valley, " This chasm -- the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori's thesis -- represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting." - Basically, we tend to "humanize" and accept as human objects which do not appear human at all (Shrek) but outright reject and even feel uncomfortable with objects which try to appear fully human (Final Fantasy Movie and this Wonderful Life animation.) It's actually a facinating read!

Uncanny Valley. It doesn't just apply to humans but art in general. As you approach photorealism the perceived 'goodness' of art can paradoxically go down before going up again.

Jesus Christ that's creepy!

A good read for anyone making "robots" : the uncanny valley

This is just a little TOO "deformed child" for my taste.

As graphics become more advanced, you run into a problem a Japanese researcher discovered called the Uncanny Valley which I believe has been mentioned here before. Basically, there is a zone right before true biomechanical and visual accuracy where the viewer's affinity plummets. Thus the success with anthropomorphic game characters--Jak, Sonic, Conker, et al--and the intentionally lowered parallelism in GTA3, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil...et al. Thus contriubting to the underwhelming sales of Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 (which were also a bit buggy and not sufficiently optimized for the PC).

Despite that, the valley can be overcome by providing a generally lush environment, like in Far Cry and Doom 3. In Deus Ex and Thief 3, the "funereal" nature of the character models stands out like a sore thumb because the environments are relatively middle-of-the-road, Thief 3's lighting model notwithstanding. They *do* look a little creepy and waxy.

However, money has to be made in PC gaming, much of which is pushed by the inevitable upgrade cycle. This is mainly brought on by competing titles and publishers, instead of being demanded or even requested by the buying public. We just want the game to work, really, and looking nice is also good, but not necessary. However, the upgrade cycle creates a cognitive contradiction, where we *need* the games to look nice because we've spent so much money keeping our systems upgraded--a requirement spawned by industry competition. It becomes a vicious cycle--for the gamer. The industry reaps the rewards either way.

But, with the increasingly impressive spec lists on consoles these days, with the price tags remaining relatively static (around $300 at launch), it becomes increasingly difficult to convince the PC gamer to plunk down more money for a videocard than he would pay for both the console and the game. Heck, you can get a GameCube, the game, and a brand-new TV for less than the cost of an X800 XT.

So many people ask, "Will my system run this game?" And it's getting difficult for the undustry to convince them *not* to buy a console, especially when many within it have made that decision already. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will just work on the Xbox. One disc, no driver issues, and if you find out that you don't like it, you can just return the game or sell it back to the retailer for, typically, twice the money you'd get for the PC version. Or you can rent it for the tenth of the cost of the PC version.

In the end, if the PC gaming industry wants to retain its user base, I think it needs to innovate in design, not in visuals. Easier said than done, granted. But the PC still has capabilities that the consoles can't touch, like online communities, mods, and other various sundry. If a dev can integrate things like patch updates and the above items into the game design, seamlessly, they might be able to keep ahead of the tide. Some of them do these things already, but there needs to be a standard, IMO.

It's called The Uncanny Valley. Things that are /real close/ to human, but not, are really creepy. Things that are easily personified, but clearly not human, are not creepy.

I was just talking about this yesterday. Someone raised up the often-cited "fact" that on average, people swallow six spiders per year while sleeping. Here's her question: how do you measure that?

If you see information and can't possibly imagine how it could have been gathered, it probably wasn't. It's just bullshit.

Also remember, 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html

Someone posted this a couple of months back in ./ Games talking about this very idea and I think this is exactly what we see as graphics get closer to reality.

This appeared on Slashdot a while ago.

The general premise is that has things move towards looking more life like, at a certain point they end up in the "uncanny valley" if they aren't perfect. This is where things look real enough, but the brain sees something wrong with it.

The human brain (and I'd suspect a lot of other species) is very good at picking up the "attractiveness" of something and a lot of it is subconcious. This obviously has developed for mating as a way of choosing the best possible mate. An example would be looking at a girl, being attracted to her and having no idea why i.e what specific features makes her attractive to you?. The counter example would be looking at another girl and finding her repulsive for one little flaw , say a limp or a mishapen nose, even though the rest of her is fine.

The reason cartoons and classic animation don't cause this is because we don't take them seriously.

I had a look at the paper, and noticed they didn't include those robot impersonators, which were the really in-thing back in the late 80's/early 90's.

I wonder where which side of the valley the mimes would be placed?

...right here .

There's a bit in there about how Aesop's fables are more effective because he used animals rather than people for his characters... interesting stuff.

It's not just a theory, it's a well-known problem in several fields including animation and robot design, usually called the uncanny valley.

No mention of anthropomorphizing machinery is complete without a reference to Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley: n. Feelings of unease, fear, or revulsion created by a robot or robotic device that appears to be, but is not quite, human-like.

As things get closer to realistic, the response to it suddenly goes very negative. This is called the Uncanny Valley. It is a concern for robot designers as well as Hollywood and other storytellers.

Robots with human faces strike me as creepy

... Carl Jung (see his little-known theories of "uncanniness", can't find a link) and by a robot designer in Japan ...

I am not so sure about Jung, but the Japanese roboticist is Mashiro Mori. Insofar as I know, he was the first to put forth the "Uncanny Valley" theory. The idea is that people exhibit a positive reaction to a robot that is somewhat human. This is one side of the valley. However, people respond with disgust if the robot is very realistic but, for whatever reason, not quite right. The arch of the scale is based upon movement and appearance.

http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html

The Uncanny Valley.

Things that look too human appear grotesque and disturbing, unless they're dead-nuts-on. Apparently there's an uncanny valley in parameter space, where things that are close to (but not exactly) human are disturbing and grotesque.

I think their design is firmly in the Uncanny Valley (article on said valley if you don't know what I'm talking about, http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html) . If this thing moves realisticly, I think the mannequin head and torso would be a bit disturbing to dance with. (And I think the guy in the picture agrees, based on his facial expression!)

This phenomenon is called the Uncanny Valley.

You're referring to the Uncanny Valley. Really interesting idea.