### The fricken point of the hypothesis is that the more realistic your robot looks, the more little details you have to get right in order to make people perceive it has human.
No, the thesis doesn't state that things get harder when you get closer to realism. It states that things will look uncanny the closer you get to realism till you hit a point where things will go better again, very different thing. If things just would get harder there never would be a valley to begin with, since you could always just fix the issues on *all* levels of realism, that is however exactly what the thesis argues against. My observations of computer graphics however simply doesn't confirm that, I have seen uncanny realistic things, I have seen realistic things that looked quite fine, I have seen cartoons that look uncanny, cartoons that don't. There simply isn't a pattern, some stuff looks good, some not so much.
And as said, since you *can't* measure 'realism' on a simple on dimensional scale its useless anyway.
### I mean, it's not like you couldn't test this for yourself! I actually feel more empathy for my damn Roomba than for these ugly zombie-like realistic robots,
Somebody builds a zombie looking robots and concludes that all robots have to look like zombies. Look for example at:
Why does it look wrong? Some obvious reason would be the arm and hand positions, a human doesn't hold his fingers like that, heck, I can't even hold my finger like that if I would want to. The skin looks also all wrong and the eyes don't impress either. How about fixing that instead of starting to dress that one like a human? No wonder that thinks look uncanny when there are so obvious faults in the construction. If you slack some human skin about a skeleton that doesn't even look half human how do you expect the results to look human?
Those things don't look uncanny because they are realistic, they look uncanny because they are *not* realistic, not even close. They have a ton of obvious faults. If you slack that dead-looking skin on something more cartoony it will look just as uncanny.
With computer animation you can get similar results with motion capture, when the data doesn't match your model properly impossible eye-lid positions, mouth positions and such will be the result. Which is why you better have an animator to fix the mess up afterwards. The important point here is that you *can* fix things, they don't look wrong because they are closer to realism, they look wrong because they are wrong. Its really as simple as that, if it doesn't look right, fix it and don't blame it on some uncanny valley myth.
Comparing some Pixar movie to Spirits Within doesn't prove the valley, try to compare the DonkeyKongCountry cartoons instead with Advent Children instead, results will look quite different, because its not the amount of realism that matters, but simply how good the animation is done.
### First, yes, you're right, voice and writing and other factors play a role, but this is totally irrelevant as the hypothesis does not concern itself with voice and writing and other factors.
The original hypothesis doesn't even concern about computer animation, let alone games, its about robotics and nothing else. When speaking about games and renderings story and writing do matter a lot. You can use stick figures and wireframe, if the voice acting and story are interesting, nobody will care. If story or acting on the other side suck, the characters will look uncanny even when played by a real human.
### The uncanny valley only comes into play when we are supposed to look at a character and interpret it as a realistic human. In those cases, we feel less empathy with a realistically rendered human than with a less realistically rendered human or with a less human looking character.
And here are you trying to cram a issue with *many* variables on a single one dimensional axis, that just isn't going to work. Computer animation doesn't have more human looking characters and less human looking ones, it has tons of different ones. You have badly rendered humans, well rendered humans, some cartoony rendered ones, some human looking ones, some human looking ones in this style, some in that style, good done art, badly done art, unpolished art, art created under great time pressure, on budget and all that stuff. I mean how to you separate them scientifically? How do you qualify how human like something is? How do you tell if something is 50% human or 75% human? Or do you just look for stuff that you think looks uncanny and then drop it down into the valley, pick your samples so that they fit the curve, instead of letting the samples create the curve?
They valley is a myth. I can agree that when trying to render more realistic humans then cartoony ones that there are more factors to take care of. The closer you get to realism, the harder it gets. But that ain't the Uncanny Valley, there is no point where things suddenly get uncanny because we are closer to realism, they get uncanny because somebody didn't take the time to fix them. You now, Pixar movies aren't pretty on the first try, they spend *A LOT* of time to fixing up all the little issues that popup. The reason they look uncanny is because they take the time to fix issue, not because everything is cartoony.
I understand the hypothesis very well, it just happens to be not true and based on the wrong premise that you can somehow place everything on a single axis on how human things look. Thing is, things don't look human or not human due to one simple factor, but due to tons and tons of factors, its simple things that as render techniques, animation and even high level factors such as writing and voice acting. So how exactly do you exact to lump all of that on a single axis? You simple can't and there the whole hypothesis already falls apart. I mean where exactly do you place Gollum? Right side or left side? Is he cute enough for the right or realistic enough for the left? The choice is totally arbitrary, same for a lot of other things. And you can just take everything that is uncanny and throw it into the valley either, since lots of that isn't even close to presenting a human.
Or how for a change you explain what you think is wrong with my understanding of the hypothesis?
### Advent Children and Gollum are perfect examples of how people can actually connect to and feel empathy for unrealistic renderings.
Gollum looks quite realistic to me, fantasy creature sure, but other then that they did everything they can to make him as real as possible. Some old DonkeyKongCountry cartoons look a lot more uncanny to me, even so they are a lot more cartoon then Gollum or Advent Children ever was. And lets not forget that between Advent Children and Spirits Within you had five years of technological development inbetween, things simply look better because technology improved, a good skin shader can do a lot to make things look less dead.
### I still think you're missing the point of the hypothesis.
The point of the hypothesis is bullshit because you can't place something as complicated as computer graphics on a single one dimensional axis. You can get uncanny results on all levels, no matter how cartoony or real things look (see Tracy Ullman Shows Simpsons, DonkeyKongCountry cartoons and all that other uncanny cartoony stuff out there). Things look good or bad due to a lot of issues, lighting, shadows, animation, etc., not just because they look realistic or not.
### This can be easily observed. The unrealistic humans in "the incredibles" seem much more human than the children from "Polar Express," even though Polar Express uses a much more realistic rendering style.
Polar Express looks crap, because they have done a bad job, not because its more realistic. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within looked better, so did Advent Children and Gollum even more so. I mean what do you expect if you use crappy looking 3D models and then map the motions of a 50 year old guy to 8 year old boy, without doing much or any fix up. I'd be surprised if you could ever get good looking results out of that setup, but that has nothing to do with Uncanny Valley, you can do cartoons that look just as crappy and creepy, see for example the Donkey Kong Country 3D cartoons or many other low-cost 3D cartoons. Some nice examples on why Polar Express looks bad and how to fix it can be found here.
### I think you misunderstand - the Uncanny Valley isn't a myth so much as an observation.
The Uncanny Valley is an conclusion, not an observation and doesn't even apply to computer animation, it was originally meant for robotics. The observation is simply that things can look uncanny, I don't doubt that one. Where I have a problem with is with the claim that they will look more uncanny just because they are more realistic or as some interpret it that more technology will mean worse looking graphics due to the valley. Things can simply look uncanny at basically all levels. Look for examples at the early The Tracey Ullman Show Simpson cartoons, pretty uncanny if you ask me, but they weren't any closer or further away from photorealism then the later one, but the later ones looked quite a lot less uncanny. Because they simply were better done.
Things look bad because they aren't well done, not because they are on some 'cartoon - realism' scale and fall into some valley. When I should point my finger at uncanny computer animation, I'll point it to the early Saturn/Playstation1/3DO/etc. cutscenes, those really could get pretty ugly. Today things look much better, even so they are much more closer to reality. Yet, I still enjoy the intro and all the cutscenes of Another World, even so they where technology wise even more primitive then anything on the Playstation1 and attempted to portrait realism.
The point is simply that sometimes things look bad and sometimes they look good, its just a matter of how much time and craftsmanship went into them, not some uncanny valley effect that dictates that stuff can't look good at some level of realism.
All that said, things can do look a lot more uncanny when they come right out of motion capture or are procedurally created (faces in FIFA or other EA games) instead of properly hand animated or modeled. That one has IMHO a far greater impact then anything else.
### Animators know what makes dead 2-D filled shapes feel "human" and likable; if they applied their skills to real people, however, they would make them look dumb, hacked, and repulsive.
A real animator knows what makes a human human-like and given enough time will be able to fix any issues that arise. The issue isn't with animators, its with automated systems like motion capture, since no matter how many reflective dots you glue on an actor, they will always be off by a little bit and that is what gives you uncanny results. When you don't have anybody to fix up the arising problem, its no surprise that they stay unfixed, its really as simple as that.
And the most important part about the uncanny valley is that its a myth and not a scientifically verified barrier for technological progress. When animation or 3D models looks uncanny, they look so because nobody who understood their craft fixed them up. Motion capture is a nice thing, but it can't replace an animator and a 3d scanner can't replace a skilled modeler, which is why the 3D scanned Tiger Woods looks creepy and the hand modeled guys in Gears of War look fine.
And btw: There have been studies comparing computer generated faces with real ones, the computer generated ones always won. Those faces have been generated by morphing multiple real faces together, so it can be considered a bit of cheating, it however shows that just because something is generated doesn't mean it looks uncanny, even if it gets extremely close to the real thing.
### You must have looked wrong. Nintendo is outselling Sony and Microsoft worldwide.
Wii has 7.3 million, Sony 3.6 million, no idea what exactly Microsoft has sold in the same time, but I think they are selling better then the PS3, which would put XBox360 and PS3 sales combined above Wii sales, i.e. there are more or at least equal amount of people buying next-gen consoles instead of Wii. Hardcore gamers aren't dying out anytime soon and neither is their games supply. There simply are not 'far more' casual gamers when you look at the numbers, just an more or less equal amount.
### Nintendo also has the advantage of catering to both non-casual AND hardcore. Metroid Prime 3 is due out in August, and I can't wait.
In a weird twisted Nintendo fanboy world maybe. Just for the record: One hardcore game a year doesn't turn the console into something that is attractive for a hardcore gamer, you need dozens of those and neither Nintendo nor third parties are providing them right now for the Wii and a look at the release list doesn't look all that exciting either.
### And that's why the Wii is winning. There's far more of them then there are of you.
PS3 and XBox360 combined still sold more then Wii the last time I looked. The reason why Nintendo is selling so good is because they are without competition in their market segment, while the hardcore market is split between PS3 and XBox360.
I said, quote: "Nintendo build with the Wii the perfect console for the casual gamer, but it didn't build the perfect console for everybody, not even close.", I never said that casual gamers don't matter. The casual gamers do matter a lot for Nintendo, since that is the audience they are selling their console to. But what interesting games does the Wii have to offer beside casual gamer titles? Not exactly much. How can the Wii be the perfect console for everybody when they don't offer the games that have driven the industry for the last years? Nintendo is ignoring a large portion of gamers, which is why the XBox360 and PS3 combined still sell more units then the Wii. That doesn't mean that the Wii will fail, quite the opposite, Nintendo has successfully isolated themselves from the competition by having total focus on casual gaming, thus Nintendo doesn't need to worry much about losing sales to XBox360 or PS3 anytime soon. On the other side XBox360 user won't make the switch to the Wii either, since it simply doesn't provide the games they are interested in.
### Nintendo's genius was making a console that EVERYONE could play, not just the hardcore gamers.
Most hardcore gamers are already tired of the Wii and with little to none original 'hardcore' games on the release list that isn't going to change anytime soon. Nintendo build with the Wii the perfect console for the casual gamer, but it didn't build the perfect console for everybody, not even close.
I can buy a ethernet card for the PC brand new, packaged with install CD for $5. So how much do you expect a port to cost when it would be build right into the unit? It can't be much and I seriously doubt that it would have changed the price at all.
### Market share indicates the relative market sizes that can potentially be hit by a release on a given platform. Higher market share = more consoles in the hands of consumers = more consumers who can potentially buy your game.
True, but one factor that people often tend to forget is that PS3, XBox360 and to a lesser degree the PC really are one market while Nintendo with the Wii is the other market. A quick look at the coming games shows that when they go multiplatform, which many do, they go XBox360, PS3 and sometimes PC, the Wii is left out because it simply can't keep up. So even if the Wii outsells the PS3 and XBox360, it might still have a smaller market share then all the rest.
I don't doubt that the Wii will stay successful, but what I do doubt is that the Wii will ever be an 'all around' console like the PS2 was. So far all the big third party titles never go to the Wii, but always elsewhere, even when the Wii marketshare increases I doubt that it will ever be large enough to force developers to make a switch. Developers might still support the Wii, but they might continue to do so with simple games and PS2 ports. Things will get interesting when the PS2 dies out and all developers move to the next generation.
### When would that possibly be a problem? That would basically require some strange situation with a totalitarian government that wants to disrupt communications between two end points, but apparently doesn't actually want to get access to the unencrypted information itself.
The point is: When I disrupt your valuable crypto channel long enough you simply can't use it and have to fall back to other means of less secure means of communication which I then can intercept.
### And what would be the point, since you could just as easily cut the other communications lines (eg. OC3s), the power lines, etc., etc.
Other lines of communication can be easily made redundant, since they don't have to directly go from A to B. They can take as many hops in between as they want and if somebody destroys a segment, the traffic can simply be rerouted around that destroyed segment.
What would this or quantum cryptography be good for in practical terms? From what I understand they only work for a single connection, i.e. when Alice wants to talk to Bob they have to have a wire running from one to another. Which means that range is rather limited and it also means it would be easy to attack. Somebody could simply cut the wire and thus forcing Alice and Bob to fall back to other insecure means of communication or to not communicate at all.
Are there ways to use these secure channels to build a real redundant network where traffic could be rerouted when lines fail? Or would the routers end up being the weak spot? Making it just as insecure as every other network?
Are there any other types of uses where those connections might be useful or are they no more theoretical toys?
A laptop with a 200dpi displays would be very useful in the first world as well, affordable ebook readers are pretty rare and the OLPCs XO laptop looks like a pretty nice machine in that category.
The biggest problem right now is that you simply can't buy an XO laptop, its not even clear if you ever will be able to. That is kind of discouraging to me as a developer.
I still like the effects. One of the big advantages TRON has compared to other movies is that the CG effects are meant to look like CG effects, after all the story plays inside a computer, the CG effects are not used to render a real world environment. Most other movies try to render real world environments and if time progresses they look very soon out of date. TRONs light cycles on the other side still look cool and stylish.
That is exactly a function where Z-axis rotation would be quite useful, since tilting just isn't the natural motion for rotating the camera, rotating the nunchuck would be, but it doesn't have the sensor to register it.
Z-axis rotation could also be extremely useful for first person shooters, one proposed control scheme was: nunchuck-analogstick walks, nunchuck-tilt rotates the view, Wiimote for aim. The advantage here would be that you wouldn't have to reach for the screen border to rotate the view, however when you have to tilt the nunchuck instead of rotate it, it looks quite a little less pretty, especially since you no longer can use the tilt to look around corners.
I think those issues are older then the Playstation, when I remember correctly the SNES started the mess, in japanese games you had B and A, while in the European ones you used Y and B for the same function. However I think Nintendos Quality Control made sure that all games where properly localized to either of those schemes, at least I can't remember a game that didn't follow it. With the Playstation on the other side its different from game to game, even in the same area.
### I consider it better to have a simpler design.
The problem is that the design is only simpler as long as you have games designed exactly for that controller. If you start having multi platform titles its only a total mess, but well, the Wii won't get multi-platform titles, not just due to the controller, but also due to the lack of computing power. Nintendo successfully isolated the Wii into its own special niche.
### I'm fine with the lack of gyros; it'd be neat, but it'd be noticably more expensive
I think[1] the PS3 controller has them, it is $10 more expensive, but it also happens to have a build in rechargeable battery.
### BTW what are some of these "many" games that need a Classic Controller? I haven't seen one yet.
All the Virtual Console ones above NES.
[1] I have yet to find a solid confirmation if the PS3 actually has them or not, and if so how many. One video on Youtube shows detection of rotation around the Z-axis, which would indicate at least one gyro, but I haven't seen any technical specs nor do I have a PS3 to try it myself. If somebody knows how the PS3 motion detection works, please let me know.
### What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?
How about online support right from launch? PS3 had it XBox360 had it, Wii is *still* lacking it. How about hardware that is actually fast enough to handle third party games? The Oblivions, Assassins Creeds, Bioshocks and such are multiplatform games, the Wii however is just to slow to handle them. I mean Mark Rain from Epic Games told Microsoft to include 512MB RAM instead of 256MB and Microsoft did that, Nintendo on the other side never asked or listened to what third parties want, they simply did their own thing, ignoring everybody else.
Another issue is with the small developers, PS3 has its small scale arcade games, XBox360 already has a ton of them as well and Nintendo still hasn't even announced if they ever will have them. Not exactly very supportive to those developers that might actually be the right people to create innovative games.
Slashdot Mirror
### The fricken point of the hypothesis is that the more realistic your robot looks, the more little details you have to get right in order to make people perceive it has human.
No, the thesis doesn't state that things get harder when you get closer to realism. It states that things will look uncanny the closer you get to realism till you hit a point where things will go better again, very different thing. If things just would get harder there never would be a valley to begin with, since you could always just fix the issues on *all* levels of realism, that is however exactly what the thesis argues against. My observations of computer graphics however simply doesn't confirm that, I have seen uncanny realistic things, I have seen realistic things that looked quite fine, I have seen cartoons that look uncanny, cartoons that don't. There simply isn't a pattern, some stuff looks good, some not so much.
And as said, since you *can't* measure 'realism' on a simple on dimensional scale its useless anyway.
### I mean, it's not like you couldn't test this for yourself! I actually feel more empathy for my damn Roomba than for these ugly zombie-like realistic robots,
Somebody builds a zombie looking robots and concludes that all robots have to look like zombies. Look for example at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Repliee_Q2.jpg
Why does it look wrong? Some obvious reason would be the arm and hand positions, a human doesn't hold his fingers like that, heck, I can't even hold my finger like that if I would want to. The skin looks also all wrong and the eyes don't impress either. How about fixing that instead of starting to dress that one like a human? No wonder that thinks look uncanny when there are so obvious faults in the construction. If you slack some human skin about a skeleton that doesn't even look half human how do you expect the results to look human?
Those things don't look uncanny because they are realistic, they look uncanny because they are *not* realistic, not even close. They have a ton of obvious faults. If you slack that dead-looking skin on something more cartoony it will look just as uncanny.
With computer animation you can get similar results with motion capture, when the data doesn't match your model properly impossible eye-lid positions, mouth positions and such will be the result. Which is why you better have an animator to fix the mess up afterwards. The important point here is that you *can* fix things, they don't look wrong because they are closer to realism, they look wrong because they are wrong. Its really as simple as that, if it doesn't look right, fix it and don't blame it on some uncanny valley myth.
Comparing some Pixar movie to Spirits Within doesn't prove the valley, try to compare the DonkeyKongCountry cartoons instead with Advent Children instead, results will look quite different, because its not the amount of realism that matters, but simply how good the animation is done.
### First, yes, you're right, voice and writing and other factors play a role, but this is totally irrelevant as the hypothesis does not concern itself with voice and writing and other factors.
The original hypothesis doesn't even concern about computer animation, let alone games, its about robotics and nothing else. When speaking about games and renderings story and writing do matter a lot. You can use stick figures and wireframe, if the voice acting and story are interesting, nobody will care. If story or acting on the other side suck, the characters will look uncanny even when played by a real human.
### The uncanny valley only comes into play when we are supposed to look at a character and interpret it as a realistic human. In those cases, we feel less empathy with a realistically rendered human than with a less realistically rendered human or with a less human looking character.
And here are you trying to cram a issue with *many* variables on a single one dimensional axis, that just isn't going to work. Computer animation doesn't have more human looking characters and less human looking ones, it has tons of different ones. You have badly rendered humans, well rendered humans, some cartoony rendered ones, some human looking ones, some human looking ones in this style, some in that style, good done art, badly done art, unpolished art, art created under great time pressure, on budget and all that stuff. I mean how to you separate them scientifically? How do you qualify how human like something is? How do you tell if something is 50% human or 75% human? Or do you just look for stuff that you think looks uncanny and then drop it down into the valley, pick your samples so that they fit the curve, instead of letting the samples create the curve?
They valley is a myth. I can agree that when trying to render more realistic humans then cartoony ones that there are more factors to take care of. The closer you get to realism, the harder it gets. But that ain't the Uncanny Valley, there is no point where things suddenly get uncanny because we are closer to realism, they get uncanny because somebody didn't take the time to fix them. You now, Pixar movies aren't pretty on the first try, they spend *A LOT* of time to fixing up all the little issues that popup. The reason they look uncanny is because they take the time to fix issue, not because everything is cartoony.
I understand the hypothesis very well, it just happens to be not true and based on the wrong premise that you can somehow place everything on a single axis on how human things look. Thing is, things don't look human or not human due to one simple factor, but due to tons and tons of factors, its simple things that as render techniques, animation and even high level factors such as writing and voice acting. So how exactly do you exact to lump all of that on a single axis? You simple can't and there the whole hypothesis already falls apart. I mean where exactly do you place Gollum? Right side or left side? Is he cute enough for the right or realistic enough for the left? The choice is totally arbitrary, same for a lot of other things. And you can just take everything that is uncanny and throw it into the valley either, since lots of that isn't even close to presenting a human.
Or how for a change you explain what you think is wrong with my understanding of the hypothesis?
### Advent Children and Gollum are perfect examples of how people can actually connect to and feel empathy for unrealistic renderings.
Gollum looks quite realistic to me, fantasy creature sure, but other then that they did everything they can to make him as real as possible. Some old DonkeyKongCountry cartoons look a lot more uncanny to me, even so they are a lot more cartoon then Gollum or Advent Children ever was. And lets not forget that between Advent Children and Spirits Within you had five years of technological development inbetween, things simply look better because technology improved, a good skin shader can do a lot to make things look less dead.
### I still think you're missing the point of the hypothesis.
The point of the hypothesis is bullshit because you can't place something as complicated as computer graphics on a single one dimensional axis. You can get uncanny results on all levels, no matter how cartoony or real things look (see Tracy Ullman Shows Simpsons, DonkeyKongCountry cartoons and all that other uncanny cartoony stuff out there). Things look good or bad due to a lot of issues, lighting, shadows, animation, etc., not just because they look realistic or not.
### This can be easily observed. The unrealistic humans in "the incredibles" seem much more human than the children from "Polar Express," even though Polar Express uses a much more realistic rendering style.
Polar Express looks crap, because they have done a bad job, not because its more realistic. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within looked better, so did Advent Children and Gollum even more so. I mean what do you expect if you use crappy looking 3D models and then map the motions of a 50 year old guy to 8 year old boy, without doing much or any fix up. I'd be surprised if you could ever get good looking results out of that setup, but that has nothing to do with Uncanny Valley, you can do cartoons that look just as crappy and creepy, see for example the Donkey Kong Country 3D cartoons or many other low-cost 3D cartoons. Some nice examples on why Polar Express looks bad and how to fix it can be found here.
### I think you misunderstand - the Uncanny Valley isn't a myth so much as an observation.
The Uncanny Valley is an conclusion, not an observation and doesn't even apply to computer animation, it was originally meant for robotics. The observation is simply that things can look uncanny, I don't doubt that one. Where I have a problem with is with the claim that they will look more uncanny just because they are more realistic or as some interpret it that more technology will mean worse looking graphics due to the valley. Things can simply look uncanny at basically all levels. Look for examples at the early The Tracey Ullman Show Simpson cartoons, pretty uncanny if you ask me, but they weren't any closer or further away from photorealism then the later one, but the later ones looked quite a lot less uncanny. Because they simply were better done.
Things look bad because they aren't well done, not because they are on some 'cartoon - realism' scale and fall into some valley. When I should point my finger at uncanny computer animation, I'll point it to the early Saturn/Playstation1/3DO/etc. cutscenes, those really could get pretty ugly. Today things look much better, even so they are much more closer to reality. Yet, I still enjoy the intro and all the cutscenes of Another World, even so they where technology wise even more primitive then anything on the Playstation1 and attempted to portrait realism.
The point is simply that sometimes things look bad and sometimes they look good, its just a matter of how much time and craftsmanship went into them, not some uncanny valley effect that dictates that stuff can't look good at some level of realism.
All that said, things can do look a lot more uncanny when they come right out of motion capture or are procedurally created (faces in FIFA or other EA games) instead of properly hand animated or modeled. That one has IMHO a far greater impact then anything else.
### Animators know what makes dead 2-D filled shapes feel "human" and likable; if they applied their skills to real people, however, they would make them look dumb, hacked, and repulsive.
A real animator knows what makes a human human-like and given enough time will be able to fix any issues that arise. The issue isn't with animators, its with automated systems like motion capture, since no matter how many reflective dots you glue on an actor, they will always be off by a little bit and that is what gives you uncanny results. When you don't have anybody to fix up the arising problem, its no surprise that they stay unfixed, its really as simple as that.
And the most important part about the uncanny valley is that its a myth and not a scientifically verified barrier for technological progress. When animation or 3D models looks uncanny, they look so because nobody who understood their craft fixed them up. Motion capture is a nice thing, but it can't replace an animator and a 3d scanner can't replace a skilled modeler, which is why the 3D scanned Tiger Woods looks creepy and the hand modeled guys in Gears of War look fine.
And btw: There have been studies comparing computer generated faces with real ones, the computer generated ones always won. Those faces have been generated by morphing multiple real faces together, so it can be considered a bit of cheating, it however shows that just because something is generated doesn't mean it looks uncanny, even if it gets extremely close to the real thing.
### You must have looked wrong. Nintendo is outselling Sony and Microsoft worldwide.
Wii has 7.3 million, Sony 3.6 million, no idea what exactly Microsoft has sold in the same time, but I think they are selling better then the PS3, which would put XBox360 and PS3 sales combined above Wii sales, i.e. there are more or at least equal amount of people buying next-gen consoles instead of Wii. Hardcore gamers aren't dying out anytime soon and neither is their games supply. There simply are not 'far more' casual gamers when you look at the numbers, just an more or less equal amount.
### Nintendo also has the advantage of catering to both non-casual AND hardcore. Metroid Prime 3 is due out in August, and I can't wait.
In a weird twisted Nintendo fanboy world maybe. Just for the record: One hardcore game a year doesn't turn the console into something that is attractive for a hardcore gamer, you need dozens of those and neither Nintendo nor third parties are providing them right now for the Wii and a look at the release list doesn't look all that exciting either.
### And that's why the Wii is winning. There's far more of them then there are of you.
PS3 and XBox360 combined still sold more then Wii the last time I looked. The reason why Nintendo is selling so good is because they are without competition in their market segment, while the hardcore market is split between PS3 and XBox360.
I said, quote: "Nintendo build with the Wii the perfect console for the casual gamer, but it didn't build the perfect console for everybody, not even close.", I never said that casual gamers don't matter. The casual gamers do matter a lot for Nintendo, since that is the audience they are selling their console to. But what interesting games does the Wii have to offer beside casual gamer titles? Not exactly much. How can the Wii be the perfect console for everybody when they don't offer the games that have driven the industry for the last years? Nintendo is ignoring a large portion of gamers, which is why the XBox360 and PS3 combined still sell more units then the Wii. That doesn't mean that the Wii will fail, quite the opposite, Nintendo has successfully isolated themselves from the competition by having total focus on casual gaming, thus Nintendo doesn't need to worry much about losing sales to XBox360 or PS3 anytime soon. On the other side XBox360 user won't make the switch to the Wii either, since it simply doesn't provide the games they are interested in.
### Nintendo's genius was making a console that EVERYONE could play, not just the hardcore gamers.
Most hardcore gamers are already tired of the Wii and with little to none original 'hardcore' games on the release list that isn't going to change anytime soon. Nintendo build with the Wii the perfect console for the casual gamer, but it didn't build the perfect console for everybody, not even close.
I can buy a ethernet card for the PC brand new, packaged with install CD for $5. So how much do you expect a port to cost when it would be build right into the unit? It can't be much and I seriously doubt that it would have changed the price at all.
### Market share indicates the relative market sizes that can potentially be hit by a release on a given platform. Higher market share = more consoles in the hands of consumers = more consumers who can potentially buy your game.
True, but one factor that people often tend to forget is that PS3, XBox360 and to a lesser degree the PC really are one market while Nintendo with the Wii is the other market. A quick look at the coming games shows that when they go multiplatform, which many do, they go XBox360, PS3 and sometimes PC, the Wii is left out because it simply can't keep up. So even if the Wii outsells the PS3 and XBox360, it might still have a smaller market share then all the rest.
I don't doubt that the Wii will stay successful, but what I do doubt is that the Wii will ever be an 'all around' console like the PS2 was. So far all the big third party titles never go to the Wii, but always elsewhere, even when the Wii marketshare increases I doubt that it will ever be large enough to force developers to make a switch. Developers might still support the Wii, but they might continue to do so with simple games and PS2 ports. Things will get interesting when the PS2 dies out and all developers move to the next generation.
### When would that possibly be a problem? That would basically require some strange situation with a totalitarian government that wants to disrupt communications between two end points, but apparently doesn't actually want to get access to the unencrypted information itself.
The point is: When I disrupt your valuable crypto channel long enough you simply can't use it and have to fall back to other means of less secure means of communication which I then can intercept.
### And what would be the point, since you could just as easily cut the other communications lines (eg. OC3s), the power lines, etc., etc.
Other lines of communication can be easily made redundant, since they don't have to directly go from A to B. They can take as many hops in between as they want and if somebody destroys a segment, the traffic can simply be rerouted around that destroyed segment.
What would this or quantum cryptography be good for in practical terms? From what I understand they only work for a single connection, i.e. when Alice wants to talk to Bob they have to have a wire running from one to another. Which means that range is rather limited and it also means it would be easy to attack. Somebody could simply cut the wire and thus forcing Alice and Bob to fall back to other insecure means of communication or to not communicate at all.
Are there ways to use these secure channels to build a real redundant network where traffic could be rerouted when lines fail? Or would the routers end up being the weak spot? Making it just as insecure as every other network?
Are there any other types of uses where those connections might be useful or are they no more theoretical toys?
A laptop with a 200dpi displays would be very useful in the first world as well, affordable ebook readers are pretty rare and the OLPCs XO laptop looks like a pretty nice machine in that category.
The biggest problem right now is that you simply can't buy an XO laptop, its not even clear if you ever will be able to. That is kind of discouraging to me as a developer.
### The CG effect look crude now,
I still like the effects. One of the big advantages TRON has compared to other movies is that the CG effects are meant to look like CG effects, after all the story plays inside a computer, the CG effects are not used to render a real world environment. Most other movies try to render real world environments and if time progresses they look very soon out of date. TRONs light cycles on the other side still look cool and stylish.
### "tilt nunchuk".
That is exactly a function where Z-axis rotation would be quite useful, since tilting just isn't the natural motion for rotating the camera, rotating the nunchuck would be, but it doesn't have the sensor to register it.
Z-axis rotation could also be extremely useful for first person shooters, one proposed control scheme was: nunchuck-analogstick walks, nunchuck-tilt rotates the view, Wiimote for aim. The advantage here would be that you wouldn't have to reach for the screen border to rotate the view, however when you have to tilt the nunchuck instead of rotate it, it looks quite a little less pretty, especially since you no longer can use the tilt to look around corners.
I think those issues are older then the Playstation, when I remember correctly the SNES started the mess, in japanese games you had B and A, while in the European ones you used Y and B for the same function. However I think Nintendos Quality Control made sure that all games where properly localized to either of those schemes, at least I can't remember a game that didn't follow it. With the Playstation on the other side its different from game to game, even in the same area.
### Games always felt better when playing them on the 'cube.
Very true, especially in RE4 I had the feeling that the PS2 had *far* less precise aiming, while the Gamecube version was perfectly fine.
### I consider it better to have a simpler design.
The problem is that the design is only simpler as long as you have games designed exactly for that controller. If you start having multi platform titles its only a total mess, but well, the Wii won't get multi-platform titles, not just due to the controller, but also due to the lack of computing power. Nintendo successfully isolated the Wii into its own special niche.
### I'm fine with the lack of gyros; it'd be neat, but it'd be noticably more expensive
I think[1] the PS3 controller has them, it is $10 more expensive, but it also happens to have a build in rechargeable battery.
### BTW what are some of these "many" games that need a Classic Controller? I haven't seen one yet.
All the Virtual Console ones above NES.
[1] I have yet to find a solid confirmation if the PS3 actually has them or not, and if so how many. One video on Youtube shows detection of rotation around the Z-axis, which would indicate at least one gyro, but I haven't seen any technical specs nor do I have a PS3 to try it myself. If somebody knows how the PS3 motion detection works, please let me know.
### What does Nintendo fail to do for third party developers that the PS3 or XBox don't fail to do?
How about online support right from launch? PS3 had it XBox360 had it, Wii is *still* lacking it. How about hardware that is actually fast enough to handle third party games? The Oblivions, Assassins Creeds, Bioshocks and such are multiplatform games, the Wii however is just to slow to handle them. I mean Mark Rain from Epic Games told Microsoft to include 512MB RAM instead of 256MB and Microsoft did that, Nintendo on the other side never asked or listened to what third parties want, they simply did their own thing, ignoring everybody else.
Another issue is with the small developers, PS3 has its small scale arcade games, XBox360 already has a ton of them as well and Nintendo still hasn't even announced if they ever will have them. Not exactly very supportive to those developers that might actually be the right people to create innovative games.