eli5 How have we made animated movies with fluid, realistic human movement, but the same still can’t be achieved in video games?
In: Technology
Games don’t really *want* realistic human movement in some cases.
Movies typically would get realistic human movement by using motion capture to guide their character rigging instead of trying to hand animate things. This works well because the movie characters are doing one, pre-planned set of movements and interacting with a known environment.
In contrast a game is controlled by the player, interacting with a largely unpredictable environment. The player can input commands in unexpected ways and expect the character to respond promptly.
Suppose for example the player says to sprint forward as fast as possible, then to immediately stop, reverse course as fast as possible, then immediately dodge to the right. If you have ever run wind sprints you know slowing down and reversing course isn’t something that can happen instantly, and if you want to move one way you will need to plant your foot on the other side of your body to push off from. But suppose the character is running and the foot they would need to plant out to the side is the one they are currently standing on? They would need to continue their run until their other foot hits the ground, allowing them to reposition the first foot to push off. All this while likely keeping their torso and arms free to operate a weapon and point in arbitrary directions.
These requirements of realistic human movement results in a character control experience which seems clunky, unresponsive, and unpredictable. Not only do the changes in direction take a while to achieve, but in the example of running the actual movement would happen during different periods of the run cycle so to the user it would have a varying delay!
So yes, it *could* be made more realistic but game designers and players don’t *want* it to be completely realistic.
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