Saturday, February 15, 2014

Path of Engagement - Uncanny Valley

Post no.7

This paper was written to disagree with Mori's theory of the Uncanny Valley. Instead they have chosen to rename the theory as 'the Path of Engagement'.

Paper found here.

They said that if anything was designed well, it could be particularly engaging. Their conclusion to the paper was that they would need to explore the uncanny valley to find the path of engagement.

The valley is non-existent!

Actually there are alot of papers that say that The Uncanny Valley is not legit at all and not applicable as well.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Uncanny Valley of Holograms

Post no.6

I found really good paper by Mr. ElmoreShidy over Here.

He talks about how holography was initially based on an illusion technique called the Pepper's Ghost. And I quote:

"Three-dimensional holographic projection technology is loosely based on an illusionary technique called Peppers Ghost, and was first used in Victorian theatres across London in the 1860s. Pepper's Ghost was typically used to create ghostlike figures on stage.

Hidden from the audience's view, an actor dressed in a ghostly costume would stand facing an angled plate of glass. The audience would be able to see the glass, but not the actor directly." 



He then talks about holograms that are found in our credit cards, and cereal boxes.

I was told to re-plot my graph and separate them into inanimate and animated holographs.

Right now in the 21st century. people are using high definition videos and CGI animations to project onto a chemically treated film via a HD screen projector.  As he says.

He talks about 3D glasses as well and how it creates illusions of depth in 3D movies, or theme park rides.

For immersion and interactivity: the projectors 'ability' and camera array. And its HD-ness.

More points to highlight:
"...would provide for the critical need for realistic holographic optics."

The future of holograms:
Advertising
Phones are capable to project holograms.

I have realized how he said that CD and DVD's are still a main sharing platform. Although this paper has been written in 2010, our technology has greatly shifted from using Cds and Dvd's to sharing through the internet like Dropbox, mediafire, cloud computing and sendspace.



also relates the shadows on the wall in platos cave are in fact, the early days of holographs.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

What are holograms?

Traditions and Locations: Post no. 5

"A hologram (pronounced HOL-o-gram ) is a three-dimensional image, created with photographic projection. The term is taken from the Greek words holos (whole) and gramma (message).

Unlike 3-D or virtual reality on a two-dimensional computer display, a hologram is a truly three-dimensional and free-standing image that does not simulate spatial depth or require a special viewing device. Theoretically, holograms could someday be transmitted electronically to a special display device in your home and business.

The theory of holography was developed by Dennis Gabor in 1947. The development of laser technology made holography possible."

Text above is ripped out from Here.

Alright, so from the essay point of view I could probably relate some theories of interaction and immersion from the audiences point of view when they observe holographic elements on stage, interacting with those holographic characters. Is the interaction between the real and the unreal, real enough for the audience to believe that it is real to be fully immersed with the performance in front of them?

Take the Gorillaz and Madonna performance for example. The characters and Madonna seem to be looking at each other on que, giving the performance a more believable outcome.

Hatsune Miku on the other hand is programmed to interact with the audience by asking them questions that has already been programmed by the programmers regardless if the audience answers her or not.

Which leads me to the next theory, the denotation and connotation to these holographic projections. I will be looking at this essay from the main theory of Mori, The Uncanny Valley which addresses more of the aesthetic values of these holograms and how people react to them.

The Uncanny Valley speaks of two main things. Functionality and Aesthetics. I have already spoken on the functionality of these holograms, through the Immersion and Interaction few paragraphs before this.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, this theory of Mori is most likely devised to categorize items according to their aesthetic values. It is based on a graph of reactions to human likeliness.


The Uncanny Valley of Holograms

Traditions and Locations: Post no. 4

Post no. 3 : Progress on Essay - Tutorial
Post no. 2 : Links for further reading
Post no. 1 : Proposal Brainstroming

Looks like I'll be the first person to ever write about this since the Uncanny Valley is initially widely used for robotics.

Here's a rough iMap I came up with and discovered the best summary to the Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley is where an artificial entity is life-like enough to make you want to believe it's alive, but still artificial enough that it clashes with your expectations of how a natural version of what it resembles should behave. Most importantly, that clash of experience and expectations really creeps you out.
- Chuck Felish

Link to the statement : Here

I found his definition spot on. Will be brainstorming on the topic soon enough.


This is the rough i-map I made.

Experts mentioned that this graph of the Uncanny Valley by Mr. Masahiro Mori (1970) is purely designed to describe the aesthetic looks of something similar or far from human likeliness.

This graph addresses both the functionality and aesthetics of the object. As you can see from my graph in the middle, I have a conflict of where I should position the dead holographic celebrities as to some audiences, it may deem cool to some or to others; creepy. 

Like Tupac or Elvis, they could not interact with the live performers. Hence, they wouldn't feel as real to the audience. Unlike Hatsune or Gorillaz, programmers would adjust the animation based on recordings of the interacting live performers to achieve the best reactions possible from the characters.

As Mori stated, designers should not thrive to achieve a super human-like appearance of their characters in order to escape the uncanny valley. This could prevent the conflict of thought in some people who struggles to identify whether the person on the stage is real or not.



Sunday, February 9, 2014

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no.15

Oh no, I tested Natzy on my laptop and the textbox isn't working properly. It doesn't give the green word feedback and it isn't uploading the fonts! I converted my otf fonts to svg, ttf, eot and woff but it's not working at all!

Everything is fine when the game is loaded on my desktop. Is there something on my laptop blocking the javascript? Hmm.

In case of an emergency, I'd just use a default font instead. Kalinga.

//Edit:

Alright, I just noticed if I opened the index NOT with xammp, the text box works perfectly perfect. There must be something wrong with the localhost then. yeay!

The fonts still cannot be loaded and I'm getting really really frustrated.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no. 14

ONE CANNOT BE TOO HAPPY WHEN THE CODE WORKS.

I got the linking and the buttons to work thanks to this lovely fiddle right here.

http://jsfiddle.net/justbyanne/p5CmF/


and a comment from stackoverflow, the one with the 25 upvotes, over here.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/796087/make-a-div-into-a-link


Right now with my game completed, it's time to do referencing and what not to get myself ready for the presentation!

Friday, February 7, 2014

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no. 13
 Menu sprite

Restart Sprite

I'm having a little trouble with the linking when the keydown is pressed, maybe its because it works the same way as the bullets where I have to convert the keydown to a click. Still thinking which orientation is better.
Earlier on.

Earlier on I wanted to use the keycodes 1 and 2 but couldn't because those numbers are focused to the textbox.



 First orientation.


Second orientation.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no. 12

Right now I have to create the Menu, Restart and Back buttons for the player each triggered by 1, 2 and 3 keycodes.

I'd also need to design the textbox as well.

In the mean time, I fixed the flying target png so that it's height was in % rather than px to make it more responsive.

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no.11

I have combined the duplicate.js from testing into my game. Firstly I had some trouble with the height and width of the container because they worked in reverse. If I were to put the container at 600px width and 200px height, the blood bullets triggered by the space bar would fly 600px height and 200px width. Which was pretty confusing, so I tried and tested a couple of values and finally thought of using % instead of pixels.

Once I put the divs within the master wrapper, I put 90% width so the bullets would only spawn till 90% of the width of the master wrapper.

Before this, everytime I hit the spacebar, it would spawn 3 more clickable elements. Therefore, the more I hit the spacebar it would just multiply by 3 for each clickable element. After a few presses, the whole area would lagged and be totally filled with those elements. What I did to fix this is that I put 'hidden' once it spawned and therefore hiding the clickable elements and only spawning one at a time. (Kinda hard to explain, but yeah somehow it worked).

Trial and error! Works best.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

PROGRESS ON ESSAY - Uncanny Valley

What I got from the tutorial session was:


  •  To focus on the appearance of holograms and plot a few famous ones on the uncanny valley graph.
  • What makes a hologram real/creepy? Dead artists brought back to life like Elvis could be somewhat creepy or technologically cool and praised by viewers today.
  • Properly analyze and think about the theory on a hologram point of view as many research on the this theory are based on robotics.

PROGRESS ON NATZY

Post no. 10


So my progress so far on natzy is that I have created two levels, hard and easy and illustrated their backgrounds. 

Right now, I still had to put in the back or restart buttons in case they would like to play it again.

Still figuring out the keydowns for the explosive matter.

Editt//

Okay, via trial and error I have finally troubleshooted the explosive elements + some googling.


I could now press spacebar to clone the elements and animate them. (the blurred red circles) Now that I have tested them out and that it works, I can now put the in my game.

HOWEVER, I could not position where the balls will be spawned and they are just spawning vertically rather than horizontally. I have tried adjusting the container size but to no avail.

I still need to put the restart button to keydowns as well.