Even after transcending the uncanny valley and with all the computational power we may be able to accumulate, setting aside utopian simulated reality theories, we won’t be able to simulate the full extent of our reality. But that doesn’t mean that what happens in virtual worlds does not leak into our flesh-and-bone reality. Our conduct can change, we can get frustrated or suffer from harassment, or we could find relaxation. And with an astounding number of tools available to the public, the creation and distribution of any scenario or mod we want is one Google search away. And while normally I’m all for custom content and creative expressions, when that curiosity resembles more morbid fascination and there’s a whole cult following it, I’m not sure what to think.
The threat of violence
Our world is extremely violent as it is, and our desensitization keeps reaching new levels. That’s why pieces like Jordan Wolfson’s Real Violence try to show it in a raw state and shock the audience. It is what it takes right now. I hope that it serves as a reminder of the real world consequences of violence. But those real life consequences not always come from more realism on the screen. Same as with the breasts physics, what people want from the GTA mods is not more realism, is just more what they think will be more fantastic and appealing. We are so used to cinematography that we forget that real life, that mundanity is… well, boring. Normal conversations would be terrible to watch were they not happening in real time with us reacting to them (and even like that, some are pretty terrible). And it’s in that fantasy, or the desire for that specific outcome, where the problem lies: the glorification and worship of violence. But it won’t stop. This country -and many more- need it to fuel their branches of the army and economy. It’s the money printing machine and videogames are just another scapegoat they can blame to turn everyone’s heads and place the weight on the desensitization on its shoulders. I wonder if in an alternate pacifist world, RPG characters would accumulate experience and level up in the same ways.
I’m not that flexible
Skeletons in Unreal are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a human’s. The joints allow anything to happen, the bounding capsules for rigid body simulations are really misaligned, and some hardly make sense. Thankfully, it can all be fixed (to some degree, and depending on how much time you have).
It was extremely hard to get the right rotation limits on some joints. The default orientation of the joint was awful and correcting that was a painful process. Paired with the fact that I could not undo any command on the Physics Asset editor, every mistake was very hard to correct.
Other than that, some body parts were not created correctly. My feet and hands did not have a solid body capsule, and the shoulders took place of the upper half of my arms. Had Matt not shown me the way of correcting it, I wouldn’t have been able to have better moving articulations (cause they’re still not that good).