L.A. Noire gives me uncanny valley

[Anayo]

The modeling is perfect. The animation is nuanced and lifelike.

It's the skin. It just looks wrong. Maybe it's the shaders they used or the lighting engine. At any rate it looks totally creepy to me. I think shooting for such realism with the current gaming hardware was a bad idea.

Anyone agree?

[Hobie-wan]

Just watched a trailer. The facial motion is very good, though at least in a YT video size it wasn't bothering me.

[Curlypaul]

Just watched a trailer as well - the one of some guy being chased and then thrown of a building. There wasn't a lot of facial motion to look at but the whole thing does look very slick, I can see what you mean about the uncanny valley.

I'm not really a fan of realistic looking games anyway, but yeah as devs get better and better at doing it then we are going to see more and more creepy looking characters.

[Hobie-wan]

This is the one I watched. A good amount of face time.

[Curlypaul]

Yeah thats some pretty expressive faces they've got there. looks like a cool game too

[lisalover1]

It's the motion that bothers me. It needs to feel a bit smoother to really nail that believability factor.

[ilovesega]

I wonder why they don't just save money and use real faces. They already hired the actors, why render them?

[Hobie-wan]

I wonder why they don't just save money and use real faces. They already hired the actors, why render them?

Trying to capture video of the people saying all of the lines from every angle, then choosing the right video stream for the angle you happen to be facing them and switch to another stream as you move around them as well as well as having it stick to a model that will also be moving without having it jitter like old PS1 textures did? Madness. Having the movement data for a 3D mesh that you can then view from any angle and is part of the character model is easier both for the capturing and the rendering when you're playing.

[Curlypaul]

Yeah they could make interactive movies with digital images of real actors. It would take gaming to the next level!

Seriously though, Hobbie is right, by using motion capture it makes it much easier to manipulate the characters so that they can react to whats happening the in game world.

[Jrecee]

They could just film real people and put the footage directly into the game. Maybe they could even make a whole new system just for games like that. They could call it the Sega CD.