In our efforts we have attacked both. The arrows and hash marks are meant to be qualitative indicators of where we think usable technology exists today. If we need to invoke them, increasingly accurate medically-grounded human models may be obtained. We can create virtual humans with consistent shape, geometry, and limitations rather than arbitrary scaling and deformability. Virtual humans are also beginning to exhibit the early stages of intelligence as they make decisions in novel, changing environments rather than being forced into one-time movements fixed in the environment.
Virtual humans are different than simplified cartoon and game characters.
The difference lies in the interactivity and autonomy of virtual humans. Since accurate human motion is difficult to synthesize, motion capture is a popular alternative, but one must recognize its limited adaptability and subject specificity. Here is where we engage the viewer with the character's personality and demonstrate its skill and intelligence in negotiating its environment, situation, and other agents. This level of performance requires significant investment in decision-making tools. Currently we are using this architecture to study multi-agent activity scheduling for aircraft maintenance, construct appropriate gestural responses from a synthetic agent, and visual attention during other task execution.