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Uncanny Valley in Virtual Reality

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games

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Synonyms

Acceptance gap; Animacy; Dehumanization; Humanness; Realism in VR

Definition

The effect of uncanny valley refers to a drop of emotional response to an artificial object. It is even higher in VR.

Introduction

Over the years computer graphics have been improved to be more and more realistic and developed special techniques to resemble various visual surface characteristics. Rendering virtual humanoid characters has been proven to be especially tricky, as humans tend to pay a lot more attention to their kind than to other beings or objects. The face is the most crucial aspect of the virtual character, as humans are extremely sensitive to deviations from a natural appearance (MacDorman et al. 2009). To create an emotional response to a virtual character, the anthropomorphism is a crucial factor. It could be assumed that the more similar a virtual character is to a human, the stronger the emotional response of familiarity.

But the effect of rising familiarity with rising realism of...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. gamelab.berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Christian Stein

Authors
  1. Christian Stein
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Stein .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Computer Science Department, Woodbury University Applied Computer Science Department, Burbank, California, USA

    Newton Lee

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Stein, C. (2018). Uncanny Valley in Virtual Reality. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_177-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_177-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9

  • eBook Packages: Living Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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