Uncanny Valley

Avatars and robots, if they are intended to look like humans, need to be highly accurate or not accurate at all. In-between invokes uncanny valley, a creepy space where things aren’t quite right:

uncanny_graph_blog

So you either make the avatar/robot look clearly non-human, or you nail it. In-between just doesn’t work.

That is why, in Map Merge, we go for photo-realism in avatars. Sure, you have the ability to make some adjustments, but the end result needs to be 100% realistic. 95% realistic turns out to be a fail…