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Game Developers' Quest To Cross the Uncanny Valley
Nerval's Lobster writes "Nearly 30 years after Super Mario Bros., video game graphics have advanced to heights that once seemed impossible. Modern sports games are fueled by motion capture of actual athletes, and narrative-driven adventures can seem more like interactive movies than games. But gaming's increasing realism brings a side effect — a game can now fall into the 'uncanny valley,' a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1970. Jon Brodkin talked to game developers, engineers, motion scientists and a variety of other folks about the 'uncanny valley problem,' in which (some) people feel revolted when confronted by a robot or digital character that doesn't quite look real. In games where human-like characters are necessary, the uncanny valley can be an even bigger problem than in animated movies; gamers control characters rather than just watching them, creating more opportunities for the illusion of realism to falter. New and better tools can help developers and animators deal with some of these issues, but crossing the 'valley' successfully still remains a challenge. Or is crossing it even possible at all?"
I still have a bunch of posters from when Aki Ross made the Hot 100, in Maxim all those years ago.
Some day I'll be able to sell them for tens of dollars!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Games are not meant to be merely a simulation of reality.
Is music an attempt to accurately recreate the sounds we hear in nature? No, that would be moronic.
And then there's this guy.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
in the hyper quest for realism — we forget that all those perfect pixels doesnt improve the story nor the gameplay.
pac man was a hit without all the fancy graphics
"I don't think Super Mario ever had aspirations to be anything approaching realism."
Indeed. Nobody in his right mind would employ an Italian as plumber.
'and narrative-driven adventures can seem more like interactive movies than games'
Citation Needed
You can watch The last of us as a movie instead of playing it. It's 4-7 hours depending on how much gameplay there is I guess. But live streaming or editing your game sessions is big business now, so I guess it might just be a shift in what is considerd entertainment.
"I make videos of me doing stuff, so you don't have to!" - Washington.
So imagine you have super-realistic characters, then you have them do something impossible like ride a dragon or glitch out on the physics engine... no matter how many hours you put in making them look really Real all it takes is one fuckup and you find yourself staring up from the Uncanny Valley wondering what happened.
crazy dynamite monkey
I believe the point was to show the degree to which video game graphics had changed. Can you think of a popular game at the same time that had significantly better graphics than SMB? It likely wasn't the best, but is far more popular than other contemporaries.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Perhaps more importantly, why would the category 'interactive movie' even get to exist when the category 'game' already does?
I realize that movies (sorry, 'Films') are High Art while 'games' are arcade trash and murder simulators for maladjusted children, so maybe this is an attack-by-superior-culture-cred; but if one looks past that, I'm not certain why a medium that has always been non-interactive (even theatre, while it often doesn't choose to use them, recognizes 'breaking the fourth wall' and audience interaction as potential elements of a piece), would be entitled to branch out into an area built by game devs.
I'm not a big pc gamer myself, but when I do play on my computers, usually I play 4X strategy games. My biggest complaint about the genre is by far the difficulty. Civ5, for example is either too easy(anything bellow immortal) or just artificially difficulty(immortal and deity difficulties). When I play at those difficulties, I don't really play a game, I just follow an algorithm(build order, research focus, etc), and if I don't do that I will lose. And it's not only me. Let's Play videos on youtube are pretty much all the same as well. For me it's simply not fun anymore. Better AI is simply mandatory. I don't need photorealism, I don't need 3D, I don't need 4K, I don't need VR. Immersion comes from the gameplay. If the gameplay is flawed, no amount of eyecandy is gonna fix it.
CGI humans in movies--pre-rendered by giant server farms for as long as it takes--still fall into the uncanny valley.
It'll be a long, long time before graphics can be rendered in real time with no uncanny valley. Although, with that said, humans still look fake enough to me in games that there is no uncanny valley. So I don't think it's a problem yet.
I don't think graphics really matter anymore, though. They're far from perfect, but 3D graphics have been "good enough" for a while now. There was a time that 3D graphics meant that hands had to be mittens with no individual fingers, and faces were just drawn on textures. Not anymore.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Perhaps more importantly, why would the category 'interactive movie' even get to exist when the category 'game' already does?
I don't know if "interactive movie" is the correct term. But I think there is a difference between that and a game. I don't have time to play games like I did in my youth. But I did enjoy the Mass Effect series. I was surprised with the third Mass Effect game in that it had not only the typical easy, medium, and difficult settings. But it also had one in which you could go through all of the dialog but not have to shoot or do any of the things that typically make up a game. I think it's a significant difference from what I would consider a game.
In the past the story was usually a bunch of cine images that you wanted to skip through as quickly as possible so you could get down to shooting stuff. For me, this actually changed when I played Dues Ex. The game play was fun in that game. But all of the character interactions really made the game a lot of fun. Plus there was a ton of dialog that I found really interesting that didn't have any effect on the game play at all, but was just really in line with the story.
You just need to play a narrative-driven adventure game to have a feeling of a movie like experience. Think of most point and click adventure game. You click and you let your character do the movement and most of the time in adventure games you got cutscenes to accompany it. Not only adventure games but action games and theres one in the metal gear series that seriously felt like a movie which is the third or fourth one on the PS console.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
Henceforth, my default answer to this will always be "Go play Heavy Rain." I'm not a gamer, but Quantic Dream's interactive fiction is much closer to cinema than game, and yet the player is very much in control of what transpires throughout the process. The game/movie is mesmerizing and gut-wrenching (despite the infamous "SEAN! SEAN! SEAN!" glitch, which plays more like a blooper real for The Shining), but it's certainly not what most would consider "fun" or "gamelike."
It's enjoyable in a way all great art is, though -- and it also treads heavily on and across the uncanny valley.
Movies are a representation of the people who works in it... Lots of movies aren't art...trust me. Also some actors are aware that a movie sucks big time, a big pile of trash as well but they still work in it cause they work with the movie with what they can.
Also, I don't see murder or arcade trash in simcity games ... you should be careful with what you say. Not every game has murder in them. thus making your statement about games being false.
To note, when a movie or tv show breaks the fourth wall, that becomes trash.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
There is an annoying set of "games" that roughly consist of someone's short story with quicktime events to proceed. Instead of the somewhat mocked 'press square to win' action games with one easy tactic, this is the 'jiggle controller while rotating the analog stick to make soup' type.
I have watched 'play'thoughs of a couple of them, and they really are just crappy short stories with animation that demand activity from the 'player' at random moments to remind you 'this isn't a movie.'
On the other hand: 'Press X to Jason'
In the same way that they have a bitmap (image) for the color of the surface, why don't they do a map for reflectivity? Real people and other things aren't uniformly reflective over the whole surface. That is why even raytraced stuff looks like plastic. Maybe someone has done it, but I've never seen it, even in movies where they have as much time as they need for raytracing.
Bioshock infinite. It was more compelling and entertaining than most movies on screen
Being a male gamer, I can not get enough of uncanny valleys. The deeper the better, lots of bounce doesn't hurt. I remember my first glimpse of uncanny valleys in Custer's Revenge, but now with realistic graphics, I can finally enjoy uncanny valleys how they were meant to.
Be seeing you...
I think you've confused "Games" with "GPU / Graphics Rendering."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
In games where human-like characters are necessary, the uncanny valley can be an even bigger problem
I disagree. The very fact that you have control over a character that you are watching is unnatural, and for me disconnects from "reality". That pretty much goes for anything else interactive as well. We know already know the actor in the game cannot be human because it behaves arbitrarily as commanded by the controls we are operating with our hand. Our brain can't be fooled by pure visuals, because we already have a far deeper realization of the truth (that it is not a real human) because it is interactive.
When it comes to movies we are total observers, and the uncanny valley kicks in when we recognize that something is intended to look perfectly human, but our incredibly acute perception in identifying humans isn't fooled.
We have now become so used to seeing CGI humans that it's more of a boolean flag when they are recognized as such - I simply have an awareness that what I'm seeing isn't an actual human. When that happens it is a distraction and reduces how immersed I am in the movie. I don't think of it as "spooky" or that I want to kill the fake human or something, but it is simply a realization - I get a glimpse of the man hiding behind the curtain pulling the strings. A perfect example: The big Matrix Reloaded fight scene. Some little switch in my brain kept going: Real. CGI. Real. CGI. Real. CGI. Kind of makes it hard to enjoy a movie.
Better known as 318230.
You are looking a little too deeply into this in hopes of finding something offensive.
"Interactive Movie" was actually traditionally used by the games industry back in the early days of digital video when they would incorporate it into a "game" but there wasn't enough game to actually call it a game, like Night Trap.
In modern context, it simply means a game that is so realistic that it would be indistinguishable from a motion picture visually, if one could choose character actions during a motion picture. It's an aspirational goal of the game industry, not the film industry trying to hone in on the games industry.
That said, the real issue with realism in games is that game developers keep pushing the envelope in the wrong direction. Even on the next gen systems (well, since they are out I suppose they are now current gen), they keep focusing on textures and increasing numbers of polygons on the screen instead of making what is there more realistic. I am always stunned when I see a brand new game and they STILL cannot get lip sync right. It doesn't matter how detailed the hairs on a characters head are if their lips don't move in sync with their voice.
not about people being "revolted" because they sense something "wrong" on an unconscious level, it's that they spend so much time trying to increase resolutions and textures that they don't focus on what makes characters alive - how they move and how they react. It's not about making single frames look more realistic, it's how they work in motion which really hasn't improved in step with the "how many hairs or pores can we texture on to this character".
Bet you love those E*TRADE commercials.
Or the one where the guy's car is a giant baby.
Or the Allstate commercial with the talking baby who complains about a talking mime.
From the article:
Ira isn’t an actual human being—he’s just a computer model—but you’d be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference.
Well...I wouldn't forgive me. You can tell by:
- The crazy amount of unnatural (colored) lighting used to hide low detail and/or too-uniform shading. Show me the same head model in a field on a cloudy day at 2pm in March
- The limited polygon count; look at the edges of his ear (which is a bit weird looking in itself btw)
Much more impressed by these, but they are pre-rendered:
http://www.cgtrader.com/blog/w...
http://www.cgtrader.com/blog/w...
http://www.3dtotal.com/index_g...
Instead of unnatural lighting they have a lot of added skin detail (wrinkles, dirt) to hide too-uniform shading. There's a lot of detail / noise / subtle imperfections in real life you don't normally think about, but when it's not there you instantly notice it on a subconscious level.
Games already have ultra-realistic-looking characters that aren't creepy...Crysis series, Far Cry 3, DMC4/5...in fact I can't think of any games with Uncanny Valley characters. It's like they leapt straight across the valley at some point rather than trudging through...which kind of makes sense. We had motion capture tech before we had machines powerful enough to render ultra-realistic characters.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In games where human-like characters are necessary, the uncanny valley can be an even bigger problem than in animated movies
In 3.38 seconds watch Disney bring a character to life. Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel
This is how it's done and you don't need photo realism to do it.
But it had a lot of gamy-ness. "Interactive Movie" is most often used to refer to games that involve little gameplay.
The Uncanny Valley wikipedia page lists very, very little research (one "study" was based on five monkeys; because n=5 is totally statistically significant). Perhaps we should determine in the uncanny valley is actually a thing before we start speculating about how to cross it.
That left paddle was hot!
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twe...
Just today Twenty Sided blogged about the "Uncanny Valley" in games when better AI makes the game feel more stupid.
bickerdyke
Most of the problem is artistic, not technological. We have more than enough horsepower to get photo-realistic rendering. At least as long as everything stays still - it's when things start to move that it all breaks down.
Particularly faces, but there are some games that look breathtaking in screenshots that look absolutely horrible once characters do anything beyond an idle animation (I'm looking at you, Skyrim). And plenty of games that manage to do good move animations and good facial animations don't do them both at once - everyone has to stand still to talk. And eye animations are very difficult, but very important if you want to cross the uncanny valley.
Much of it comes down to animators being trained mostly for non-interactive works, and game engines not being good at merging animations together or altering them dynamically (look at how feet clip through small ground obstacles). I think what is really needed are combined programmer-animators, who can write code to dynamically animate complex systems. Some games have done this in limited ways, but if you want to cross the valley completely, you need that extremely rare skillset combined in one person.
You can bypass all these problems by using prerendered cutscenes, but that makes it not exactly a "game" at that point, just movie snippets.
Of course, the other way to bypass it is by not aiming for photorealism. You don't even have to go as far as cel shading - Bioshock: Infinite certainly isn't aiming for photorealism (look at the eye-skull ratio and head-body ratio), but it also certainly isn't what I would call "cartoony".
Artists have found ways to cover up the things the coders can't do well - look at how many characters have something that covers their mouth or eyes. The good ones have always found ways to do this - Samus's massive shoulder orbs are partly to cover up how they couldn't get the complex shoulder joints to work right.
I don't believe there is any video game that comes anywhere near the "uncanny valley".
It might happen some day, and I hope it does, but we're not even close yet.
In regard to the comments suggesting that games don't need to be realistic to be fun, I absolutely agree. But I've noticed lately that I really appreciate games that have realistic portrayal of light. So many games get this wrong. The world seems flat and claustrophobic instead of giving the feeling of space. I don't know why I'm noticing this more and more, but I find that the games I want to inhabit are the ones that have an expansive, open feel to them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
it does increase immersion...which makes different demands on our cognition than pac man or super mario.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
"Too much fighting" was a frequent complaint against Bioshock Infinite. People loved the story but had to wade through hundreds of bad guys to advance.
If they had an "Interactive Fiction" mode like Mass Effect 3, the game could have appealed to a much wider audience than the FPS crowd.
Granted you can watch it on YouTube to get around the fighting, but that's very interactive.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
NOT very interactive.
bleh.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Disagree. What op meant was video games that offer a sweeping cinematic experience, often moreso than many movies. Many Hollywood starlets are stuck in the uncanny valley as well.
well, it's in your mind. ..I mean, fuck, just look at the final fantasy movie. though you could just argue that its shitty model making.
which is what uncanny valley ultimately is, no artistic talent so you just make "realistic" shit.
personally, if its good stuff I don't care if it's animated in stick figures. one of my favorite games ever, from art standpoint, is interstate '76, and its anything but realistic in its cutscene and game graphics, but dang it works. and in a game its friggin frustrating if the graphics are lifelike but due to that you can not then do anything in the game - that makes you feel like youre rewinding and forwarding a vhs tape.. and not playing a game.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The best games have all the elements that are not essential to game play abstracted away so they don't distract the players. Like Chess, or Go. Increased realism detracts from game play.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This video is probably the best explanation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Off topic: Some comments appearing on beta slashdot as serif typefaces is a bug not a feature. The font-family is "Helvetica sans-serif", which doesn't actually exist. Maybe there should be a comma in there.
Hollywood starlets
Thank you for reminding me about some of those plastic surgery train-wrecks. Urgh.
they don't focus on what makes characters alive - how they move and how they react
Probably because it's the hardest thing to get right. One of the principles behind uncanny valley is that an animated character that isn't quite right is perceived much worse than a picture (which is the biggest thing that put me off Heavy Rain -- really stiff character animations).
Look at movies, they're still not bridging the gap. Watch any animated movie, even the ones going for hyperrealism and you still can tell they're not human. And they have tons of processing and rendering power and a predefined movement filmed at a predefined angle. Game developers have none of that, they have to do it in real time, often as a response to user input (like if you're fighting a swordsman, he must turn to face you) in a free camera angle. They'll be at least 20 years behind the movies, if they ever achieve it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Because "game" implies you have a challenge to overcome. An "interactive movie" doesn't necessarily have any, but simply gives multiple-choice questions to determine how things will go. A more advanced one might have a "drama engine" like current games have physics engines, putting together the story as it goes and incorporating unforseen developments.
Heck, even Dwarf Fortress isn't really a game - since we all know how it'll end - so much as an interactive horror movie.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Agreed. It spent some time servicing the requirements of the genre in ways that we're tangential to the story. I played it on easy mode to mitugate this problem
It's supposed to be fantasy. I honestly enjoy cartoonish characters much more.
In the same way Pac Man for the Atari 2600 was. It may have been more fun to play the game than watch TV, but nobody would sit back on their couch and watch an entire run of "Let's Play Bioshock Infinite."
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A lot of recent anime (eg. Coppellion - looks good visually but a million plot holes) has photorealistic backgrounds but people like like simple 2D cell animation figures. That avoids the uncanny valley problem entirely.
This is an old idea. Tom Baker Doctor Who covered it well. Something just grate on our instincts Faces are really important. Somethings just feel wrong.
I see you've never played bioshock infinite.
http://this-is-movies.blogspot... HD 1080p