Where Dalí chose to paint physical and biological impossibilities, De Chirico’s paintings, on the other hand, though they seemed to be more accurate in the depiction of the real world, have nevertheless their own impossible touch. Filled with, mostly, physical and biological impossibilities, his paintings prove to be a challenge for game developers who wish to emulate a world that resembles Dalí’s soft physics. Dalí, as a man with an excessive number of eccentricities, painted the world around him as only a man who claims to remember his birth could. Two painters that could fit into the category of impossible artists are surrealist painters Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) and Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978). While Reutersvärd dabbled only in designing shapes and objects that transcend the geometrical laws, Escher managed to incorporate these designs into his paintings, creating art–in the process–that transcend the Euclidean laws and also provided the inspiration for later artists and mathematicians–like Roger Penrose and Douglas Hofstadter–to try their own hand in creating impossible figures. Escher (1898 – 1972) is the major follower of Reutersvärd’s artistic perspective. His most famous shape is the impossible triangle which later became more commonly known as The Penrose Triangle. During his long career as an artist he created thousands of impossible figures that seemingly break the laws of geometry and space. Oscar Reutersvärd (1915-2002) is considered to be the father of impossible figures and shapes. Escher, Oscar Reutersvärd, Salvador Dalí and Giorgio De Chirico among others, some notes on physical/temporal impossibilities will be given to showcase the possibilities that a developer is offered in order to create a hyper-real virtual world.īesides exploring how impossible elements can be introduced in 2D, 2.5D and3D game worlds, it is necessary to gain basic knowledge of how the human visual system works in order to better understand the limitations imposed in the design process of game worlds that utilize stereoscopic imagery.Ĭoncluding this article, we will assess what possibilities stereoscopic video games have to offer to potential game developers and the gaming audience and what opportunities these game worlds open up for future technologies that involve video game development. While we will explore, to some extent, the geometrical/mathematical impossibilities in this article, best exemplified by the works of M.C. This separation is dictated by the simple fact that the computer hardware used to design, create and implement these virtual worlds is based on mathematical reasoning and not a physical one. Even though in the mathematical and physical world, that we live in, space and time co-exist and are interdependent on one another, we have to separate them for the sake of better understanding what is possible and what is not when developing a video game. At this point, we must distinguish between two major categories of impossibilities in video game world design, geometrical/mathematical impossibilities and physical/temporal impossibilities. This brings us to the second major topic of discussion for this article: impossible shapes. These game worlds, although they have a connection to our reality, architectural structure or geographical coordinates, are definitely un-realistic and without any origin in our world, comprised of fantastic creatures, alien architecture and geometrical and physical impossibilities. In this article, the term “Hyper-real worlds” will be used to describe worlds that are not that much further from what Baudrillard describes. In Baudrillard’s own words, hyper-reality is a simulation generated “by models of a real without origin or reality” (Baudrillard, 2000, p. The term Hyper-real is used extensively by philosophers, such as Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco they use the term to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in cases of technologically advanced societies. Game developers, even during the early years of game design, have always searched for new and interesting ways of creating more elaborate, immersive and realistic environments for their video games.Įven the MUD’s (multi-user dungeons), designed in the late 1970s, such as Roy Trubshaw’s MUD1, implemented such interesting ways of connecting their rooms as teleportation, paving the way for later developers to design and implement interesting and imaginative environments that border on the fantastic or the Hyper-real, as we will designate these worlds in this article.
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