The Uncanny Valley

[jeff_duntemann]

Back in 2001, I saw previews of a movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and my initial strong reaction was, Yukkh! That's creepy! The film attempted photorealistic human characters, and did about as well with the animation as one could do circa 2000, but many people commented that

Comments

[obreerbo]

This is interesting to me, as it bears on something I've been spending a lot of time with recently, to wit, Second Life and its use of human-styled avatars. At this time, human avatars in SL would be on the left side of the Uncanny Valley, but some kind of get close to the edge. (My own, for instance, is styled to resemble me, and sometimes, when looking at it, I can feel a little freaked out...although it may just be a "This is so close to looking like me, it's freaky!" kind of reaction.) Of course, not all avatars are "human" either....

Many of the default avatars, especially female ones, have subtly-exaggerated facial features. This may be an attempt to avoid the Uncanny Valley; it certainly makes some of them look attractive. Some have commented that the standard faces look Indian in some respects, like Bollywood actors and actresses.

Word is that Linden Labs, the company running Second Life, is working on a new series of avatar technologies to make them more realistic yet. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the problem of the Uncanny Valley.