PS3 Home located in Uncanny Valley?
First, let me say that the footage is gorgeous. If the release product looks like this... well, it's just very cool. Take a sec, before Sony requires YouTube to pull the video.
I'm especially impressed by the quality of in-world media. One of my research interests is embedding news media in VR spaces. Second Life isn't quite high-res enough for easy embedding of readable, attractive media. This... may be better.
The one question I have is whether Home lives in the Uncanny Valley. This could be a problem. Let's see. Sony, bring it on! Let's see some head-to-head competition among the virtual worlds' providers.
I'm especially impressed by the quality of in-world media. One of my research interests is embedding news media in VR spaces. Second Life isn't quite high-res enough for easy embedding of readable, attractive media. This... may be better.
The one question I have is whether Home lives in the Uncanny Valley. This could be a problem. Let's see. Sony, bring it on! Let's see some head-to-head competition among the virtual worlds' providers.
posted by Prof. G. at
9:42 AM (permalink)
2 Comments:
It will be interesting to see some more close-up animation of the faces used on the avatars. From the video clip, the motion looks stylised enough that it fiull-body motion doesn't seem to trigger a UV response, but the real test will be facial animation.
I'd be interested to know where you feel that Second Life avatars sit in terms of the uncanny valley?
By
Stephanie, at 10:26 AM
Hi Stephanie,
Good point, but I think I'm already feeling a bit of the "uncanniness" just from the combination of higher resolution facial features and their lack of emotion.
Of course, when Sony adds more emotion, I just might be even more UV'd. Only one way to find out, right?
Are you familiar with McLuhan's construction of hot and cool media?
Cool media, such as comic books and low-res Second Life (OK, I added SL. McLuhan's been deceased for a while) require the human brain to interpolate -- add a bit of information/interpretation -- to make the medium work. It's in some sense participatory from frame one.
Hot media are more high-res, therefore don't require/encourage the participation at quite the same ground-floor level.
I tend to think of the UV through a McLunanesqe lens. It's the place where the medium loses its coolness (it's McL coolness, not its "cool, dude" coolness).
I hope that makes some sense. Usually, it takes more than a few paragraphs to properly explain McL, but that would make for a huge blog entry!
By
Prof. G., at 10:58 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home