HCI 530 : Seminar (HCI) Damian Schofield Slide 2 HCI 530:
Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within) Immersion
Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks Slide 3 HCI 530:
Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within) Immersion
Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks Slide 4 TED Talk
(Sixth Sense) Sixth Sense Technology Slide 5 HCI 530: Seminar (HCI)
TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within) Immersion Realism The
Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks Slide 6 Final Fantasy Final
Fantasy The Spirits Within Slide 7 HCI 530: Seminar (HCI) TED Talk
Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within) Immersion Realism The Uncanny
Valley Concluding Remarks Slide 8 Final Fantasy So why do we build
: Games ? Virtual Worlds ? Immersive Environments ? Slide 9 Final
Fantasy What is Immersion ? Slide 10 Immersion What is Immersion ?
Immersion is the state of consciousness where an immersant's
awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being
surrounded in an engrossing total environment; often artificial.
This mental state is frequently accompanied by spatial excess,
intense focus, a distorted sense of time, and effortless action.
The term is widely used to describe immersive virtual reality,
installation art and video games, but it is not clear if people are
using the same word consistently. Slide 11 Immersion What is
Immersion ? The sensation of total immersion in virtual reality
(VR) can be so described: "You lose your critical distance to the
experience and get emotionally involved. It could be not only a
game you are a part of, but any kind of experience.... You feel as
if it is very real but know it is not." Slide 12 Immersion
Immersion in History Slide 13 Immersion Immersion in History Slide
14 Immersion Quotes A stirring narrative in any medium can be
experienced as virtual reality because our brains are programmed to
tune into stories with an intensity that can obliterate the world
around us... The experience of being transported to an elaborately
simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy
content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a
metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being
submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from psychologically
immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or
swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely
other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over
all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus As quoted by
Alison McMahan in her essay Immersion Engagement and Presence: A
method for Analysing 3-D Video Gamesin the book The Game Theory
Readered. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron Slide 15 Immersion
Quotes Immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a
passage from one mental state to another. It is characterized by
diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing
emotional involvement in what is happening. Virtual Art: from
Illusion to Immersion-Oliver Grau The quality of apparently being
present in images is achieved though [the] maximization of realism
Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion-Oliver Grau a suspension of
disbelief, a state in which the players mind forgets that it is
being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it
perceived as reality. Game Design PerspectivesFranois Dominic
Larame Slide 16 Immersion Quotes I am a video game addict and it is
not because of the certain number of hours I have spent playing or
nights I have gone without sleep to finish the next level, it is
because I have had life altering experiences in virtual space Slide
17 Immersion According to Ernest Adams, author and consulter on
game design, immersion has three main categories: Tactical
immersion Tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile
operations that involve skill. Players feel "in the zone" while
perfecting actions that result in success. Strategic immersion
Strategic immersion is more cerebral, and is associated with mental
challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when
choosing a correct solution among a broad array of possibilities.
Narrative immersion Narrative immersion occurs when players become
invested in a story, and is similar to what is experienced while
reading a book or watching a movie. Slide 18 Immersion S. Bjrk and
J. Holopainen, in Patterns in Game Design, divide immersion into
similar categories, but call them : Sensory-motoric immersion,
Cognitive immersion and Emotional immersion, respectively. In
addition to these, they add three new categories: Spatial immersion
Spatial immersion occurs when a player feels the simulated world is
perceptually convincing. The player feels that he or she is really
"there" and that a simulated world looks and feels "real".
Psychological immersion Psychological immersion occurs when a
player confuses the game with real life. Sensory immersion The
experience of entering into the three-dimensional environment, and
being intellectually stimulated by it. The player experiences a
unity of time and space as the player fuses with the image medium,
which affects impression and awareness. Slide 19 Slide Copyright
Anna TitoAnna Tito Slide 20 Slide Copyright Anna TitoAnna Tito
Slide 21 Slide Copyright Anna TitoAnna Tito Slide 22 Slide
Copyright Anna TitoAnna Tito Slide 23 Slide Copyright Anna TitoAnna
Tito Slide 24 HCI 530: Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The
Spirits Within) Immersion Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding
Remarks Slide 25 Police Shooting of a Civilian Stoke-on-Trent, UK
Crime Scene Slide 26 Police Shooting of a Civilian Stoke-on-Trent,
UK Crime Scene Slide 27 Police Shooting of a Civilian
Stoke-on-Trent, UK Crime Scene Slide 28 Slide 29 Slide 30 A
sophisticated level of realism, containing a high level of detail
is often necessary since modern audiences have high levels of
graphical literacy. Crime Scene Slide 31 Combining abstract and
realistic representations to enforce a message can be effective,
however, testing must be undertaken to ensure that the audience are
getting the correct message. Abstract Representation Slide 32 So
what is your favourite computer game and why ? Computer Games Slide
33 Perhaps a thought tool can be of assistance. The comics creator
and analyst Scott McCloud devised an extremely useful one, named
the picture plane, for describing visual representations. Though
applied explicitly to comics in his book "Understanding Comics", as
he explains it "represents the total pictorial vocabulary of comics
or of any of the visual arts". A game related equivalent is shown
below: Scott McCloud Slide 34 Slide 35 While developers and
publishers race to cram themselves into the bottom left corner of
Scott's plane, and are squeezed dry of all the resultant ugly hype,
some will continue to work in the largely unexplored territories of
visual representation. It's those implementations we need to push
game aesthetics outward. Scott McCloud Slide 36 Realism - Movies
Slide 37 HCI 530: Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits
Within) Immersion Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks
Slide 38 Uncanny Valley The uncanny valley is a hypothesis
regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots
and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual
humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the
positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's
lifelikeness. Slide 39 Uncanny Valley Slide 40 Slide 41 Slide 42
Slide 43 Slide 44 Slide 45 It is possible to become accustomed to
the look and feel of the animated planet, but every time the film
switches between the live-action world and the computer- generated
one, its as though that kitchen door is swung open. We snap out of
our blissful unawareness and are reminded that we arent really
exploring the world of Pandora but really just watching a movie
cleverly designed to make us give it our money. Realism - Movies
Slide 46 Another thing I find interesting with this next-step in
film technology, as many critics refer to it, is that Avatar really
expects viewers to understand and feel for the computer- generated
characters as they would live actors. In historical Japan,
performers mastered the art of bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet
theater. The puppets moved in such a realistic fashion that viewers
were supposed to be tricked into believing the puppets were alive.
Such realism was not intended to be awe-inspiring but rather
unsettling. Viewers were supposed to feel uneasy about believing
the inanimate puppets to be living. Realism - Movies Slide 47 I
have a similar feeling about the computer-generated characters of
Avatar. Not only can I not relate to them, but they creep me out to
some extent. In fact, there is a scientific hypothesis regarding
this very issue. The uncanny valley hypothesis states that close
humanoid replicas cause a response of revulsion in human viewers. T
here are a number of criticisms of this hypothesis, but I think it
is something interesting for filmmakers to consider before plunging
headfirst into GCI. Realism - Movies Slide 48 HCI 530: Seminar
(HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within) Immersion Realism
The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks Slide 49 We need to begin to
ask the questions: Why do players play? What makes a good game? How
can we make better games? We start looking at developing better
user interfaces and better game play as well as the standard
immersive bells and whistles. We start asking ourselves why do we
play? Concluding Remarks Slide 50 You can have a great game with
crap graphics but a crap game will always be a crap game no matter
how pretty. Concluding Remarks Slide 51 Assignment Slide 52 HCI
530: Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits Within)
Immersion Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks Game
Examples Slide 53 Realism - Crysis Slide 54 Realism Heavy Rain
Slide 55 HCI 530: Seminar (HCI) TED Talk Final Fantasy (The Spirits
Within) Immersion Realism The Uncanny Valley Concluding Remarks So
why do people really play games ? Slide 56 Slide 57 Slide 58 Slide
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