Better Technology, but Less Realism: The Perplexing Development and Application of VTuber Technology

Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) are a type of digital human created by digital technology that has become a cultural phenomenon. As modeling, motion capture and rendering technologies have matured and hardware and software costs have fallen, it has become possible for individual VTubers to create high-quality simulated 3D avatars. However, the results of this study, which analyzed the images of the 400 most popular VTubers on both YouTube and Bilibili, found that the majority of VTubers still choose to use 2D animated avatars. We believe there are three reasons for this perplexing phenomenon: visual subjectivity, cost objectivity and psychological subjectivity.