Notices

1. deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 19:17:05 CEST deshipu

   Imagine a whole book with all narration written in first person present tense. Pretty awkward, isn't it?

   So why do game developers try to do whole stories in first person perspective?

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 19:50:10 CEST deshipu

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga That's the problem though. It's not how we experience the world. And it surely is not how we experience memories.

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 22:54:51 CEST deshipu

     in reply to

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga In addition to that, you have equilibrioception and proprioception, which give you an accurate information about the position of your body, and somewhat less accurate information about your facial expression. Together with stereo hearing and the 3D information from your eyes, they give you a general idea about the whole room and your position in it. And that's how you actually experience it.

     You can tell by how you sometimes have "out of body" experiences in your dreams.

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 22:54:52 CEST deshipu

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga That's a topic for several books, but for sure not as a small 2D rectangular projection of a 3D scene.

     Human eyes, even if you only look using one eye, don't see 2D images. They have a very narrow field of view that has high resolution, and constantly move around and track and scan the shapes of the objects around us. Those movements are not just in 2D, but also in accommodation, so they give you perception of depth (in addition to stereo vision). You also have peripheral vision.

     cont.

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 23:14:02 CEST deshipu

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga That is the level of detail at which we experience the world. You were talking about experiencing the world. That's that.

     Narration is always, 100% of the time experienced as a third person thing, because of what it is — a story being told.

     The simplest way by which perception of a physical space can be improved is ditching the stupid first person perspective, and letting the player get most of the information they would normally have, by showing them their character in context.

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 23:20:39 CEST deshipu

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga Yes, but that only works when you get it from the third person source!

     It's actually an amazing ability of humans, we can project our selves into something as simple as a cursor on the screen, and actually physically react to its motion by dodging and flinching! There were MRI tests done of people doing this,and you actually involve your motor cortex in this! The experience is real.

     But it only works if you have enough context, when you look at it from a third person perspective.

   • deshipu@mastodon.technology's status on Saturday, 30-Oct-2021 23:26:03 CEST deshipu

     • Ekaitz Zárraga 👹

     @ekaitz_zarraga You mean the fourth wall?

     Games already habitually break it, by displaying HUD, menus, inventories, stats, navigation cues and all sort of other information. And lo and behold, unless done really badly, it doesn't break the immersion! We kind of smuggle the information into our situational awareness, without paying too much attention to how it was actually presented. As long as it can be interpreted at a glance, without having to involve the conscious parts of our minds, it just disappears.