Zombie Research Society
At the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco Activision showed off its next-generation rendering technology. The video below shows the technology in action, but it may also serve to illustrate why zombies are so scary to humans.
The uncanny valley is a theory in robotics and computer animation which holds that when a human replica looks and acts too eerily similar to humans it can be seen as repulsive.
As animated beings take on more and more human characteristics they become more pleasing to the typical observer, but only up to a point. The “valley” refers to an extreme dip in a graph of the comfort level of humans when faced with a non-human character that is hard to distinguish from the real thing.
Just like when Uncle Ted comes back from the dead to eat you. He looks almost just like his old self, but you know deep down it’s not really him. Not good.
So what do you think of think of the Activision man? Is he creepy, cool or both?
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Wow,,,,he’s NOT real??? That IS creepy but yet fascinating! I think that I would be almost scared of a life sized model next to me!