User:Grrrreat/research/canopy-draft01

PLease note that this is still very beta-ish. Feedback annd comments very much appreciated.

In my text I would like to start with looking at phenomena that often take place in first person perspective (combat) ego-shooters and are usually used for trying to improve the immersive qualities of the game. I would especially focus on effects that simulate the experience of the Avatar by influencing his visual perception. These effects are sometimes very elaborately programmed, like rain running down the outside (inside) of the computer screen, blood splatter in the face (eyes?) of the Avatar, or lensflares and the likes.

All of these effects are actually not perceivable by the human eye, yet we tend to accept them as something that gives a game a more 'real' edge. Especially in the case of lensflares it seems very paradox because only a camera can 'see' a lensflare because of its complex mechanical composition, yet we know this stylistic element from war movies, not war itself, a world that only war movies give us insight to. Like in the movie 'Saving Private Ryan' which was one of the first ones to employ a very fast camera shutter speed for action scenes in order to achieve some kind of gritty, hyper rela look which again can not be perceived in reality by a bare human eye.

So I guess my questions would be along the lines of:

Why do we emply perspectives that are not preceivable to the human eye when we want to depict the hyper real (or just stress the illusion of reality)?

Furthermore: By doing this do we already assume that only a machine could produce/witness this? And what kind of effect (should be more precise i guess) could it have if we assumed our perspective is that of the machine?

Or maybe do we already define ourselves by the perspective of the machine? Are there any examples for that?

Examples:

By machine I mean not a machine in a traditional way but more something that has to do with the technical and cultural production of images.

This is all still kind of diffuse and still needs some more definition and a clear objective. Maybe broadening the theme but narrowing down the questions/s would help?