If only this had been true...

Matching the "real" camera point of view, i.e. what you actually see, with your character's vision, i.e. what *he* is supposed to look at.

Think about it: in every first person game you look through what they are supposed to be your character eyes, but actually you don't. You're not looking through his eyes, you're looking through a camera, which you can pretend is placed roughly in the middle of his eyes. But actually that camera is just what it is: a camera pointing to a 3D world, there are no character eyes to look through. The "first person" view is just an illusion, which doesn't match what your character he's supposed to look at, because his eyes would have a completely different point of view.

Add to that that when in RL you look at your reflection in a mirror you're actually looking at yourself [and you can easily look into your own eyes], but when in a 3D game you are in first person mode and you look at what's supposed to be your reflection in a mirror you're actually looking to a fake character. It's not *you*, because *you* doesn't exists. Hence the developers have to fake your reflection with what people believe is a clone of themselves, but actually it's not, is a completely different model which they have to animate accordingly to the movements of the first person camera, which POV can't match your character's vision because it's actually pointing at the world from a slightly misplaced point of view.

There's a number of games out there with first person view reflections, but no one of them is doing it right. It's technically nearly impossible, and you can easily tell it by yourself by going as close as possible to the reflective surface: once the camera is very close to your "mirrored" character's eyes the magic is gone because of the camera POV not matching the POV of the fake character. In short, what you are looking at can not be what your mirrored character is in turn looking at.

Does this work in a different way if in third person? I guess I don't understand why first person point of views can't just be a third person pov zoomed all the way into the front of the PC's face. Or, is it not possible for the PC to be a regular physics object in games--that is, giving off light or reflecting light in game.

Thing is, when you are in third person mode the camera is simply pointing at a human model, which can be reflected by just about any reflective surface in the world with no problem at all. However, if you just move the camera all the way into the front of the model's face, it wouldn't work: the camera POV must be a few inches ahead from your model's face so you can't see his nose and whatever else he's wearing, like eyeglasses / helms / capes / etc [see http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/7092/mirrorg.png], hence when you get very close to a mirror the camera POV doesn't match what your PC is supposed to look at because of the camera point of view slightly misplaced compared to your PC point of view. Devs might prevent this with a custom collision detection technique for every reflective surface in the world so the player can't get very close to mirrors and such, but it would basically be a real PITA.

Actually in the previous post I forgot to mention what the *real* problem is. If you choose to zoom the camera POV all the way into the front of the PC's face you also must take into account both the camera and body movements. When you look down, what are you supposed to move? The camera, the head, or both? If it's just the camera you would be able to see the bottom of your face, which is wrong. If it's both the camera and the head, what's the limit of your head movement so your own chin doesn't penetrate your chest? If it's the whole body, how can you tell whether your PC is just looking down or bending over? If you set a limit to your head vertical movements, how are you supposed to look all the way down? When you look to the left, what are you supposed to move other than the camera? The eyes, the head, the torso, the whole body? Etc etc. And all those movements must exactly match your own reflection. It would be a coding nigthmare, and it basically can't be done without eyes, head and body tracking systems.

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Pretty insightful. We know from CoD they can get around this by animating a body with no head while in first person, but yea that makes seeing your reflection impossible.

The coding nightmare must be done at some point! Hopefully soon.

Haha, be a real shame if we couldn't.

is it a plus or negative in seeing your feet? Just wondering. Why?