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Matrix-Like VR Coming in the Near Future?
Anonymongoose writes "A researcher at Brookhaven National Lab reckons it could be just a few years before computers can pass through the uncanny valley. The article refers to this as a 'Graphics Turing Test': 'a computer can be considered intelligent if it can create an artificial world capable of fooling a person into believing it is the real thing.' Michael McGuigan has been performing some interesting experiments using Brookhaven's Blue Gene/L supercomputer and has shown that it can produce realistic lighting effects in real time. McGuigan's original research paper (pdf) is available online."
Future Tech Prediction Checklist:
"Researchers" did or said something: x
"A few years" before the tech is out: x
Promises to change the way we think of computers: x
Shitty PDF "research paper" that was probably written by a half drunk college kid: x
Gimme an 'O', gimme an 'R', and gimme an 'N'!
It won't have to fool me into believing it's the real thing; I WANT to believe. I'm quite willing to ignore some gaping holes in any VR representation (but not others, nudge & wink).
(In fact my "Top Ten" List would contain more than a couple of anime characters)
Maybe in the new virtual worlds there'll be something good on TV.
I think I'd be impressed by a realistic virtual world. This one isn't convincing. There's a dead pixel in Iowa.
You fudge it with a nonsensical but repeatable and predicatable algorithm, like quantum theory
This is something that has always made me wonder. When computer graphics reach the point where you cannot readily tell if the image you are seeing is real or synthetic, how will this affect video game violence?
Can you imaging Grant Theft Auto X with full realistic imaging? How would that affect someone when they go beat a whore to death with a baseball bat and the mind cannot as easily dismiss the disturbing imagery as virtual.
When I played DOOM, I found myself trying to look around the corner of the inside of the computer screen.
It was immersive enough to fool me...
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I type this every time.
I wonder though... particle physics aside, if you were born into the model a la The Matrix, would it matter if it was photorealistic? I have 20/20 vision, but I've heard that people with bad eyes don't really realize how much detail they're missing till they get glasses. If the Matrix had the graphic levels of DOOM or Quake 1, but you never saw what real life looked like, would you buy it?
I'd mod you up if I had the points.
Perspective is a very powerful thing. If you know nothing else, it's near impossible to even wonder about how it could be better.
For example, remember when the N64 was new and GoldenEye was the best game ever? I back to GoldenEye every now and then and I wonder how I could ever understand the writing or make out the other players from the background. I've just gotten used to "better" graphics.
Can you imagine a colour that we haven't discovered?
That said, I wouldn't volunteer my children or myself.
1178161 is prime...
But as for still frames and modelling, we're getting there:
Sexy Girl - http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=532817
Tattoo Guy - http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=550192
The Artist - http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=472843
As for realtime photorealistic animation though, we're a long, long way from there. Lighting is one hurdle, the bigger hurdle is content. Models, textures, rigs... forget rendering, all of this takes a lot of time to BUILD for a photoreal environment.
Its one thing to come up with a realistic model and scene for a photo-realistic still frame. Its another, to rig all of those models so that they can interact with each other in a pre-determined way. Its something altogether entirely different to do this in real time without predetermined paths and choreographed actions, and modelling all viewable elements based upon the degree of movement that a user has within the space.
This is very much highlighted in the differences between high-poly count models (for detailed stills) and low-poly models (used for 3D games). The "art" for immersive environments like simulated 3D gaming (fps, racing sims etc) is to come up with a convincing representation of a real world object with the lowest poly count possible.
Currently the difference between these polycounts is massive.