If you thought that Gears of War or the forthcoming Halo series have the best graphics that will remain in the memories of gamers forever, think again. According to industry experts, video games will soon have ‘real’ characters with photo-realistic faces and expressions.
David Kunkler, Producer for Obsidian Entertainment says, “Games are presently in an uncanny valley. They look strange; they are too close to real, but not quite real. Give us another year or two, and we will be able to completely get across that uncanny valley. People are doing motion capture very well, getting the ‘exactly right’ facial expressions, eyes moving correctly, every little crease, wrinkle and nod, really coming across. That’s when we’re going to be able to fool the player into thinking, ‘this is a real actor’, and that’s when we’re going to move to emotional content in games.”
Ian Livingstone of Eidos said, “We will be able to play with people’s emotions, we can make them laugh, we can make them cry, we can make them sad. Elements of Hollywood have been drawn into creating the next generation of consoles.”
So, in a few years time there could be more games like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil that have many human characters in the gameplay. This technology from gaming could have many other uses; one of them being presently used to train soldiers to communicate with people in Iraq.