Comments on: Avatar Gaze Breaks Fourth Wall

By: Namron Therian

Namron Therian — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:13:37 +0000

PBS’s “Nova Science Now” has an episode entitled “What’s the Next Big Thing?”. In one of the articles they describe how robotics developers are tackling the issue of teaching and engineering robots how to mimic human behavior so as to help us “like” them better and feel good about interacting with them. It would seem logical that this type of engineering would apply to avatar design as well.

By: Soede

Soede — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 17:35:01 +0000

The Look caught me off guard the first few times, and I do think it’s a bit too frequent but I like the effect. Better though is when the avatars of other people look at you.

By: ironyca

ironyca — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:34:07 +0000

Hehe I wasn’t even exaggerating when I wrote that article, they really did freak me out. I spent a long time experimenting with it because it was so odd. It was especially bad with several avatars as sometimes the camera would trigger them all to turn their heads and look at you.
It does make the avatars seem more autonomous, but is that what we want?