While games are becoming ever more realistic, there are still flaws that can distract from the gaming experience.
Zoom in and textured surfaces like grass or stone can look lifeless and artificial.
Recreating the appearance of common materials is currently a long and expensive process requiring either expensive laser scanners or laborious modelling by artists, but a new method invented at the University of Manchester could revolutionise the way future games look. Now all that is needed is a normal digital camera with a flash, and some clever software.
Team member Dr Mashhuda Glencross said: "It's a really low cost and easy way to get depth information.
"We plan on releasing it as a free application from our web page as the technique has already been presented at a top conference.
"It has attracted attention from a computer games company and a firm that was creating a dome projection movie for planetariums about Mayan civilisations.
"We initially developed the technique for the architecture industry, where it would be used for visualising buildings and adding surface detail for increased realism.
"There is also potential for it to be used in movies."
Using the new system two photos are taken of a surface, one with the flash and one without.
A computer programme developed by the team is then able to recreate the surface texture in 3D by analysing the shading patterns in the images.
The basis of the system is very simple, working on the assumption that the brightness of a surface is related to its 3D position. So with a rocky material, parts of the surface recessed in to cracks are dark, while parts which protrude would appear lighter.
And the colour of a material will always be perfectly recreated because the flash will illuminate every part equally.
The new software can compare every pixel on the two photos and calculate how brightly it should appear in a virtual world. The system has already been tested on volunteers, who were unable to tell the difference between the expensive laser scanned images and the new photo based images.
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