Lifelike experience

"Lifelike" is an adjective that relates to anything that simulates real life, in accordance with its laws. Its goal is to immerse individuals into what is called a lifelike experience. It gets as close as possible to real life behavior, appearance, senses, etc., therefore enabling its subject to experience what is happening as if it were real. In other words, simulating reality with its physical laws is the objective of lifelike experience.

Lifelike experience is an idea which has evolved since the time when a painting was considered lifelike. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is famous for the ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism which contributed to the continuing fascination of the work. A whole painting technique has been created pursuing the goal of the lifelike art form, called trompe-l'œil, involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.

However, this perception was replaced by photographs and then by digital ones that resemble reality even further. Today, a digital picture is considered closer to lifelike if it is compared to a raw painting. It is the same pattern with motion pictures compared to still photos and with 3D movies compared to 2D films. Each new medium or technology brings people closer to a truer lifelike experience.

There is only one thing which remains consistent – people must consider the experience suits real life laws. For example, to be absolutely lifelike, a digital guitar must behave exactly the same way the real object does: if someone plays the E string with a plectrum on the fifth fret, it will produce an A note with a particular sound. This same action will produce a different sound with fingerstyle technique. If someone decides to burn the guitar, it will burn in a predictable way according to its materials, the environment, the combustible, and other factors.

Consequently, anything said to be lifelike has to comply with real life rules. It only conceptualizes real life to reproduce it, using laws of physics, chemistry, etc. to make it the experience lifelike. Another example would be a digital ball staying up in the air or floating. This would not be lifelike since it ignores gravity. Its movement needs to fit nature’s laws, thus falling on the ground and then bouncing in a specific direction, according to its initial place and applicable forces.

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Wikipedia