During the fire alarm today, I was telling Karli about a video game that a friend showed me called Final Fantasy XIII. For the Playstation 3, this game has some of the best graphics quality ever. The design of the human characters is incredible, the backgrounds are breathtaking, and the fantasy elements appear amazingly depicted. It was like the Avatar of video games.
She proceeded to ponder how we can tell the difference between reality and a meticulously constructed animation thereof. FF13 and Avatar are both so realistic they appear like real life, but some part of you can tell it is computer-generated.
Other than prior knowledge, she and I wondered, how can we detect reality as opposed to animation?
I then proceeded to call "dibs" on this topic and that I would post it when I got home because she was working. Not to make fun of her; in fact this blog topic is brought to you in part by her.
But really: with everything from Photoshop to motion-capture animation, how can we detect what is real?
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy comment-
I think that in a sense, we can tell what is real and what is fake because we have lived for many years. The subconscious of our brain detects the little things.
For instance, we can tell when something has been photo shopped by a shadow being off. Or perhaps, some girl's head is too big for her hips (callin' em out). I think that these are just the little things that make us think, 'That isn't quite right.'
Eventually, these little things add up and we determine that something is fake/photo shopped/animated.
Also, I believe that technology will never quite reach what our eyes (well some of ours) can see.
On another issue, how do we know that we are seeing the same thing as our friend right next to us is. You will never know how good your eyes are until you see better.