ON CELEBRITIES, HDTV, GAMES AND REALISM

PICTURES TOO SHARP

Two unrelated  stories on memeorandum highlight the irony of higher definition andcompuer graphics realism in the TV and gaming industries today. 

First is this piece titled "Celebrities look bad in HDTV", where the headline says it all.  As I noted in a post back in March:

"With HDTV becoming more mainstream in the next few years, will this result in a transition in our favorite performers, much as the move from silent movies to talkies did?  It was bad enough when the camera alone added ten pounds."

This post in Gizmodo on how CBS will not air it's Victoria's Secrets special in HDTV, potentially highlights this increasing sensitivity.  As this Telegraph article notes;

"Hollywood commentators have begun savaging stars normally considered attractive who appear haggard or saggy in the new medium, which boasts resolution six times that of normal television."

See the 2004 and 2005 lists of the top lists of celebrities who don't look their best in HDTV according to Philip Swann of TVPredictions.

On the other side of the entertainment spectrum, in the world of console and PC video gaming, the concern is the opposite, as technologies make "human" characters seem more human.  As noted by Clive Thompson in this Wired article titled "Monsters of Photorealism" referring to new XBox 360 (wikipedia links and image reference are by me):

"Ironically, the blame falls partly on the Xbox 360 itself, and its bleeding-edge graphics engine. Sure, the 360 can generate the most photorealistic human avatars of any game console in history. But that is precisely why they look so creepy.

This paradoxical effect has a name: the "Uncanny Valley." The concept comes from the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who argued that simulacra of humans seem lively and convincing so long as they're relatively low-resolution.

Think of history's best comic strips: With only a few quick sketches on a page, Bill Watterson can create vivid emotions for the characters in Calvin and Hobbes. When an avatar is cartoonish, our brains fill in the gaps in the presentation to help them seem real.

But when human avatars approach photoreality? Something weird happens. Our brains rebel, and we begin focusing on the tiny details that aren't quite perfect. The realism of our avatars suddenly plunges downward into a valley -- and they begin to look like zombies."

There you have it...graphics technology is getting good enough to make computer people look real enough to seem unreal, and real people look too real.