"Wait, that's a thing?"

I don't buy into this myself. The goal of RPIMUDs back in the day were very much like the goals presented by the CoE devs, and had very loyal playerbases. With a graphical game you can get even more immersive, so it will reach a broader loyal playerbase. That said, games of this type attract a niche of players who do not subscribe to the uncanny valley thing in the first place, and those that do would probably never settle in CoE anyway.

It all goes back to that fine dark chocolate analogy that Caspian has talked about. :)

Unfortunately that's a barrier that needs breaking through for realism.

Most players are drawn to realism in games, graphically speaking at least. Minecraft graphics, and cartoon fests are feeling increasingly dated.

You only have to look to major titles like Skyrim and see what PC modders have been doing to it. In all cases, the graphics have been enhanced all the more by a willing user base, desperate to breathe further life into the game, and increase the realism.

Posted By Oracle at 12:40 AM - Sun Feb 26 2017

Unfortunately that's a barrier that needs breaking through for realism.

Most players are drawn to realism in games, graphically speaking at least. Minecraft graphics, and cartoon fests are feeling increasingly dated.

You only have to look to major titles like Skyrim and see what PC modders have been doing to it. In all cases, the graphics have been enhanced all the more by a willing user base, desperate to breathe further life into the game, and increase the realism.

Yeah I'm thinking that most people don't notice or care. But for me it's hard to get engaged into a storyline when I look at a guy and dislike him instantly. Especially with those cold, dead eyes.

After I made this post I realized in my head "well if someone could figure that out then there'd probably be a fix for it already". But the only way to get passed it is through better graphics and more realism, or to take steps backwards. Which I'm sure no one wants.

Can OP give an example of a game that he/she thought avoided the uncanny valley? It seems like this is a pretty big pet peeve of yours, so how have you avoided it in other games?

Are games like Overgrowth, Guild Wars, and the Elder Scroll series too uncanny valley for you when they introduce more fantasy elements? What about The Last of Us, Silent Hill, or Biohazard? As Oracle said, what about games like Minecraft or Cube world? XCOM? Assassin's creed? Final Fantasy?

Have you just been disgusted with all games so far or? Does aesthetic play a major role in this?

The way most devs do it is by making the graphics somewhat stylized, rather than trying for photo realistic. CoE doesn't seem to be going for photo realistic, so I don't think it's going to be an issue.

It doesn't seem like most of the people in this thread actually understand what UV really means. It doesn't mean any game that is not photo realistic, it means a game that tries, but doesn't quite make it. There's a small chunk of stuff that falls into the category, that's why it's called a valley. When you plot the effect, it looks like a valley.

Hard to find one of these specific to video games, but it's the same idea:

Idk man those last two are kinda uncanny to me

It's not a thing for me at all. I've never looked at a game character and felt revulsion. They're game characters. Years ago they were very basic, now they're very realistic, but still not completely realistic.

I'd far far rather have an imperfect-but-trying-to-be-relistic characters than another scantily clad cartoon waving a 10 foot 100lb sword.

One that I've seen lately that I like is Elite Dangerous. You can make some weird looking characters as with any creator but to me the fairly subtle facial animation makes them more lifelike than most games.

MMO's are the last place you should be worrying about uncanny valley, by design their graphical budget is going to be MUCH lower than other games because of how much dynamic content there is. You can have a "pretty good" looking MMO but it's never going to be Crysis or Metro or Rage or <insert previous benchmark game here>.

Though if I had to point out one thing that people ALWAYS seem to get wrong in MMO's it is animations. Animations are often completely awful and not synchronized to movement at all, to where it looks like characters are board game pieces sliding around into position. WoW always impressed me because it was and STILL IS one of the only MMO's I've played that avoids this issue really well. It boggles my mind how many games have this problem.

Given even Lucasfilm couldn't fully get rid of uncanny valley with their Tarkin and Leia CGI creations in Rogue One, I think the least of our worries in an MMO being done on a tight budget is uncanny valley. I realise people like to say the phrase to show they know what it means, etc, etc, but it really is the least of our collective worries I think.

Posted By Caspian at 12:54 PM - Tue Feb 28 2017

Hey All,

This is a great question and the topic of the Uncanny Valley is one that was brought up at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) yesterday. Arisilde did a great job touching on what it actually is, but let me go a little deeper so there's a clearer understanding.

All animals on the planet - including humans, have a discerning eye when it comes to identifying things that are like themselves. Statistically, people pair up with partners who are about as attractive as they are, and people are very keen to notice visual anomalies in others - even subtle differences in the symmetry of someone's face.

This is an evolutionary adaptation and isn't something we do consciously. Even babies can recognize a human face from that of an animal's once their eyes clear a bit.

What the Uncanny Valley is, is really the subconscious unease we feel when something looks like it's pretending to be human. The closer something comes to looking human, the more critical we become of the subtle disconnects. And while relevant to movies and games, it's real focal point is on robotics and the creation of machines designed to resemble humans.

Robotics aside, I'd like to say this is one of the reasons why games tend to use stylized graphics instead, but the reality is we're just now really starting to experience the Uncanny Valley in games. Up until recently, real-time graphics lacked the performance capabilities to generate life-like characters in real-time. However, it's something that we've been seeing in movies and cinematics for almost a decade. Perhaps the best example was the Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within movie - the first attempt a feature-length photo-realistic movie.

That all said, Chronicles of Elyria, while maintaining a stylized look that is closer to reality, isn't attempting photo-realism. It's still a stylized game. To be photo-realistic would require significantly more complex shaders than we're using, better global illumination, higher res textures, etc.

So while the Uncanny Valley is definitely a concern in robotics and modern media, our ability to create photo-realistic characters in real-time that trigger the UV-response is still a ways away.

Of course, facial animations still suck in most cases and causes it's own kind of nausea. :-)

Very well explained as always. Thanks Caspian.