I watched Valve’s Half Life: Alyx trailer and it got me wondering.
Valve likes doing things as well as they can. In the trailer you can clearly see that the player character’s hands aren’t attached to arms. They just disembodied floating thingies. Now, the question is, why is it done that way? Is it just too hard to animate otherwise?
[Trailer for reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W0N3uKXmo)
In: Technology
Because determining the position and motion of the arm is an extremely difficult and tasking calculation. Remember the motion tracking is happening on your head and controllers (hands). Imagine trying to guess the position of someone’s entire arm from the coordinate position of their hand and constantly calculate its physics and animation rigging accurately. Not to mention how quickly you can move and adjust your hand position.
literal laziness. There’s no reason they cant animate enough arm to make it so that you never see floating limbs like that
I think it’s too hard to do collision physics on the entire arm. Floating hands mean you probably won’t suddenly move an elbow at half the speed of light.
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