Real Life Graphics Brings Virtual Reality a Step Closer

Year 1999 movie “The Matrix” becomes less of fiction. Not being able to differentiate between real life and computer generated graphics might become both a future problem and an achievement. Below are some pictures from upcoming games this 2015.

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Photorealism becomes a trend in today’s games. The detail is tremendous and so are the processes beneath that. Running water is difficult to be recreated realistically because many processes happen simultaneously such as reflections and collisions, which is why the study of kinematics and particles is essential to the gaming industry. Other examples include, smoke particles or leaves being blown by the wind.

But to do all of this, a substantial computer will required. And the reason this hasn’t been produced before is because it requires the latest computer hardware. The Moore’s law says that every 2 years the number of transistors on a microchip will double. In general the increasing transistors on a chip will mean more power. Three decades ago the amount of transistors was in the thousands. By shrinking the size of transistors to nanometers, today an average quad-core has around 1,000,000,000. Sadly Moore’s law slowly comes to a halt as we have failed to keep up with the predicted amount of transistors. Because the heat becomes far too unbearable, scientists estimate Moore’s law will die out by 2020. Scientists must find an alternative for old silicone until then.

In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo does not realize that his surroundings are imitation, built by robots to conceal the fact that humans have lost the war. The robots proceeded to harvest energy from human minds as they were asleep in a capsule. Interesting film, but more interesting because virtual reality is finally a thing. Gadgets like the Oculus rift make you feel as if you were actually there in the video game. It’s a head mounted device with the purpose of blocking out the unneeded surroundings to make you feel more immersed because everything you see from top to bottom is the simulation itself.

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But for video games to truly feel life-like, we must overcome the uncanny valley. The hypothesis called the uncanny valley is the explanation to why things that seem almost human-like are creepy and unnatural. Besides computer graphics and gameplay, storyline is another major factor that takes place in games today e.g. “The Last of Us”, “Assassin’s Creed series”. A key to having a good story is having good characters, most likely believable ones. With realistic rendering come realistic humans that are more believable which IMO will improve the experience tenfold.

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Will virtual reality pose a threat to society? Even now here are those who stare at the TV screen for days without end. Wouldn’t virtual reality or more specifically, gadgets like the oculus, produce even more health threats to their audience? Yes, it might. But this reason alone should not halt the revolution that’s soon to come. The film and video game industry pushing for realistic rendering, CGI and virtual reality will also help advance education by means of practice by simulation. Performing a surgery, driving a car or flying a plane in a risk free environment will be made easy with the help of Virtual reality.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2187746/Entering-matrix-Computer-games-indistinguishable-reality-decade-says-experts.html

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http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19p7f7/is_moores_law_really_still_in_effect/