Sony’s Magic Lab are set to demonstrate a new procedural animation system which it says allows VR characters found in VR to “imbue a sense of shared space with the player” with realistic eye, head and body movements.

GDC 2017 is underway, and as ever the event is brimming with intriguing talks on the subject of VR and subjects tangential to it. Magic Lab, a division within Sony dedicated to researching future advancements in the field of entertainment, has understandably been somewhat pre-occupied with the conundrums surrounding virtual reality.

At this year’s Game Developer Conference, it’s picked one of the more difficult topics that face developers of immersive entertainment (and in truth gaming at large), how do you make your in-game NPC’s react believably. Whilst this problem is not limited to VR gaming, due to the medium’s unique ability to conjure presence in players, sharing space with a virtual character means those NPCs are far more susceptible to appearing fake or uninteresting.

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Magic Lab are due to demonstrate a new set of procedural systems which it says allow virtual characters to react not only to stimuli from the virtual environment, but more importantly cues from players. The demo will feature NPCs which can “react to sound/motion of the virtual environment as well as player sound/motion” and “interpret player head/hand pointing directions.” The NPCs then demonstrate virtual attentiveness by adjusting their “eyes, head, and body in a coordinated manner” whilst limited to their own specific field of view. The demo will allow the player to toggle various aspects of the demo characters on and off to gauge the effectiveness.

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With social VR such a focus at the moment, with one of the world’s largest social companies firmly fixed on VR as the social platform of the future, solving ways to fool our acute human social senses are going to become extremely important. We’ll let you know how successful PlayStation Magic Lab have been as we’re at GDC all this week, and will hopefully see it in action.

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Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Very interesting, this should help a lot indie studios

    • Mike

      Hopefully it’ll add some basic expected behaviors that are always lacking in NPC’s, such as not just standing there no matter what bizarre things the player does. For example, if you get up in a character’s face, they should back away. If you run into them, they should move, and make some kind of comment like “stop it” or “what are you doing”. Not difficult things to program, but for some reason are always missing.

  • OgreTactics

    Nice idea, kind of like Golaem or MyArmy? Well it depends if it’s integrated into any real engine.