Imagine. You're playing the latest online role-playing game which, for once, is living up to the hype. The environments are lush. The details are rich. The monsters are rendered in devilish detail by an angelic touch.

And then... you run into a small log lying in front of you. This stops you in your tracks – literally. The log is richly textured; it's accurately modelled; but it behaves like a brick wall.

Despite being a 97th level warrior who's just slain thirty ogres single-handedly, you can't raise your in-game foot 18 virtual inches to pass over this small log. So you walk round it, and carry on. But you just can't get over it.

In 1978, the Japanese roboticist, Mashiro Mori, came up with a theory that might explain your disquiet. Mori stated that the more human a robot looks, the more we experience a huge surge in warm and fuzzy feelings for it. But only to a point. Once this point is reached, there's a deeply dramatic descent, and our warmth turns to ice.

Why? Because when a robot becomes super lifelike, we begin to notice the things that are subtly wrong. The repetitive gesticulation. The slack skin. The dead look in the eyes. Suddenly we recoil in horror. Mori called this dive into disgust the 'Uncanny Valley'.

Mori, of course, was talking about robots – and when the term 'Uncanny Valley' is used in gaming it normally applies to the characters. But the same principle can also be extended to inanimate objects. You don't expect a blocky, pixelated tree to sway in the wind or splinter realistically when you blow it to bits with a rocket launcher. But if that tree is all but identical to the one in your garden, you find it disconcerting if it doesn't act like the real thing.

And that's why, in a game, if a log acts like a brick wall, it fills you with unease.

Luckily, for our sense of disquiet, Intel is creating increasingly powerful and programmable multi-core processors to support developers in their efforts to ensure that game don't just look real, they act real.

With enhanced technology, developers can now do great things. These include multi-threading to improve overall frame rate, accelerating asset loading to make scene transitions more seamless, and improving game physics to ensure objects interact with each other and, more importantly, blow up more realistically.

One day, you won't just be able to step over that log. You'll be able to pick it up, and swing it around to take out a few ogres. This will make each battle unpredictably different.

Especially since, in the future, each ogre will be able to respond to you with words and body language that's well-timed, appropriate and customised to your specific in-game situation. One of the ogres might shoot you a chilling glance of such menace that, for the first time ever in a game, you freeze in fear. Until, that is, your game reflexes kick in, you pick up that log, and you swing it at the ogre's head.