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Avatar Me: Photorealistic Quake Skins
Polaris writes "A British company is demoing some really cool tech at the Millennium Dome: you can get yourself scanned and uploaded into a Quake (or other) game (well, just an avatar of you, but a pretty good one at that.) Screenshots are available!"
This is vastly simpler then trying to fit yourself into your buddies' flat bed scanner.
First they put an apple on the scanner, and then it disappeared, so then, like, I stepped up, and it digitized me. But now the world looks alot lower resolution (like, 800x166 at 16 bit!), and I'm glowing blue! What's worse, the games I play aren't ANYTHING like quake - I'm riding around in a motorcycle and playing discus! What's the fun in THAT?!
This may go without saying, but I think that this kind of technique will find much greater life on the communications venue. Now that the ability to create a photorealistic Avatar of yourself has been created, the logical next step is to move forward to create chat rooms or other places where people communicate with each other in an OOC context where people may actually care about what you look like in real life. Photorealistic Quake III skins are cool, but nothing beyond that... I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Avatar chats that already exists tries to get their hands on this.
Dave
I'm willing to say most people here would enjoy it more than a screenshot of you in a G-string :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
This is *just* what we need.
... "Be a beacon?"
Bear with me:
"Oh, it's all their fault, playing Doom made them kill their classmates!"
"But Doom didn't have realistic human targets."
...
See where I'm headed? Now Q3A *has* realistic human targets.
Bill Gates, anyone? (Sorry -- I just had to.)
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
What Java demo ? It's not an applet but an Active X control ! Didn't you get the "do you trust this content" crap dialog ?
...
...
It doesn't work on Netscape (of course) but on IE, the link is this
http://www.avatarme.com/download/example1.htm
The speed is probably slow because of downloading all that data, or they might have a crappy viewer with software only rendering
- sigs are for wimps.
I think you ought to. That way, you won't have medical staff checking your pockets for medical insurance documents when you arrive unconcious and bleeding at the A&E... Or be put second in line to someone with a small cut when you're critical condition, just because they're insured and you're not...
"wonderful, equal, free government supported health care systems of Europe".
Actually, I _do_ live there. And some of the state healthcare systems are _really_ good.
At least, when Europeans do finally get to hospital, then they are there until they're cured or dead, as opposed to when the insurance runs out... An Oregon friend of mine's Dad was sent home to die of stomach cancer once his insurance cash ran out...
The NHS is an excellent system, but it needs cash, badly. I'd gladly pay an extra 10% tax on my grossly inflated earnings, if that was what it took. Sadly, now that the age of conviction politics has given way to soundbite politics, that will never happen.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
They got the date exactly right. All the idiots who don't understand the millenium dates got their show when they wanted and all us wingeing cynics will get to see it closed at the end of this millenium.
Uh - not that I know of.
What the hell is a milliard?
Oh well. I _liked_ it. The central show is impressive - even if the story's not any good. The Blackadder's worth seeing. That huge RC airship is _so_ cool that I really want one. The body zone's dull but that's not all there is to it! I can't remember the exact names but I enjoyed the transport, earth, that one with the huge kid and the IR cameras, plus that funky flying saucer thing where you're going into the earth.
It's definitely worth going to. It's a good focal point for the millenial celebrations (even if they did get the date wrong...) and it wasn't that expensive. IIRC £780 Million, which buys a _lot_ less than you'd think. Next time you see a government announcement, look at how much any of these wonderful new initiatives cost. Anything significant normally costs several _Billion_ pounds.
Stop being a killjoy and enjoy it.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Most people have given up on trying to preserve the binary system (thousand = 1000 ^ 1, million = 1000 ^ 2, billion = 1000 ^ 4, trillion = 1000 ^ 8) and switched to the American unary version (1000 ^ [1, 2, 3, 4]). That's a shame, because the English version covers a wider range of numbers with less redundancy (compare binary vs unary numbers).
However I still wouldn't use 'billion' or 'trillion' because it's ambiguous. You can say 'milliard' for 1000 ^ 3 but that sounds a bit archaic. Best to use computer-style suffixes, eg £5G is 5 milliard pounds.
And you'd better not even mention 'kilobytes'-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
A milliard is a kind of duck.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What part of running around and attacking photorealistic representations of other humans do you NOT find to be appalling?
Maybe the transition was so slow you didn't notice. First, we were shooting alien ships. Second, we ate monsters. Third, we started shooting the aliens themselves. Then, we started shooting people, but they were "zombie" people so it was OK. At long last, here we are running around, hunting photorealistic simulations of people for the kill. Where do we progress from here?
How far removed is this from Columbine? I can see this as fodder for both JonKatz and ESR. Katz wouldn't dare upset his geek readers with that notion, and ESR could look to it as an example of why EVERYONE should be armed at all times. Ugh, maybe I'm just sick and tired of hearing about Quake and other shoot-em-ups. How much longer will one have to wait before Richard Smallman gets the idea of making a Quake clone called YAFPS?
Great. Now those 2 ton yanks will be easier to shoot as their characters will be 8 feet wide.
Actually, the common rabble used off the shelf avatars (Brandies were the female, can't remember the male). The techno-elite used slick custom models. That is the distinction which sets them apart. The deal with facial expressions was that only two people in the entire meta-verse could have accurate facial expressions. Juanita used Hiro and herself as models for all Avatars facial expressions. As such, she feels that Hiro and herself are the only two people in the entire meta-verse who can have genuine interaction.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Yep, been there, done that. For some more fun, try keeping your head perfectly still, and moving your eyes. Start with them looking in one direction, and change them as the scanner goes past your nose. Perfect for that Marty Feldman look...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Not being a Quaker I might not have any idea, but don't you have to download other people's skins in order to see them yourself? Or is that just how Half-Life works?
'cept my glasses won't be what's really big ;)
If you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality maybe you shouldn't be playing violent videgames. I'm not one to take the 'games cause bad things' position, but a responsible person should know how sensitive they are and make the decision to participate or not to participate instead of just some general moralizing.
The more advanced FPS's get the more they become like the Photon game from the 80's with the slight difference that the out of shape and obese can run as fast as anyone else.
So I think this will be great fun, but only for a private network with your buddies.
But if someone finds out how I manage to get my boss scanned this way, hey, I'll do it...
You found a sword: +4 damage, +5 moderator points
I agree, but I wonder if AvatarMe, or the functionality of Quake 3 is to blame for the poor mapping, and the blur?
As in, if you're really fat, can you not fit through/get stuck in doors? It'd be a blast playing multiplayer in a fat arena - everybody gets skins from here and goes crazy. Imagine all the gibs...
Unfortunately, Slashdot does not allow tags in postings, so I don't have an alternative to using ^H^H^H's.
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
Someone tries to get a skin of their boss/co-workers? Keep this technology away from USPS workers!
I'd like to see Jar-Jar too.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Interesting, I at first did not catch the meaning of the ^H because I am TOO OLD a geek.
I know that the backspace is a HEX 08 which can also be accessed by doing a control h key combination on the keyboard.
I then saw that the control charactor is represented by the carrot "^" symbol which is something I remember seeing before.
The following explanation assumes that the least significant bit is on the right.
For those who might care the H is the eigth charactor of the alphabet and the reason control h gives you a HEX 08 is because the control key masks out the binary bit number 7 of the combination.
The masking makes the binary 0101000 a binary 0001000. The shift key also does the same thing to bit number 6, it toggles bit six from 1 to 0 assuming you are starting out with a lower case h. As such a captial H is 0101000. A lower case h is 0110100. A back space is of course 0001000.
This can be discerned by looking at an ascii code chart.
So by a very round-a-bout path I saw that the meaning was to erase by way of destructive backspace the word or phrase directly before the series of ^H's.
It is quite funny how techy things get used and the original reasoning is not remembered or valued.
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
And could we get customized weapons skins? As in, could I skin the railgun, make it look like I'm carrying around a wombat instead wildly firing projectiles out of its butt?
You can already customize weapon models and skins in Quake II (I haven't played Q3A)...
This is why audio tape is not really evidence unless a witness testifies under oath that it is correct.
(Yea yea... IANAL.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
-- RLJ
yes folks, that's humor
Another fun thing to do is scan your hand, but move it with the light as the scanning head crosses it.
You can make 12" long fingers. (-:
ftp://ftp.dailyradar.com/movies/pc/halo_e3_preview _hires.mpg
omfg!!
No, you don't understand! He's not writing IT as in the acronym for Information Technology, he's writing IT ("it" in all caps) as in the giant pulsating brain that controls the planet Camazotz. He's under IT's control!
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
I want ultrasound done on my insides so when I see my heart and liver bouncing across the floor after being fragged they look like my heart and liver :)
The Dome is no different from any other major attraction (Alton Towers, Chessington etc. etc.) if you go there at peak times then you're gonna have to queue. My advice FWIW is to go in the mid-late afternoon. By 5pm the place is only 1/4 full, and you can get on all the attractions no problems. The Dome is open until 11pm.
I thought the Body Zone was overrated, but interesting.. My favourite zone was the Relaxation zone - well worth a visit.
As for all the moaners going on about how the money could have been spent better elsewhere, well the same could be said for any money that is not spent on a) Hospitals or b) Schools.
IMHO the *REAL* reason that the dome has had nothing but bad publicity is that on NYE there were hundreds of journalists who had to wait outside in the rain. From that point on there has been a vendetta in the media against the dome and the people involved in it.
The british media effectively run this country, and are trying to ruin everything that ordinary british people should be able to enjoy. A case in point is the recent eclipse. In the event, it was less than spectacular due to the inclement weather that the UK is reknowned for. However for weeks before, the press and other media were predicting "CHAOS" in west england. This was utter bollocks events were cancelled, due to poor ticket sales - a direct result of the negative publicity.
Don't let the media ruin the dome for you. Check it out and make up your own mind.
Cheers
Dady FP
That would be a mallard. Daffy Duck is a mallard, 1000 x 10*3 is a millard... ;p
So how about a millard mallards?
DJ Warble
===== Warble://VX
When Quake first came out, my friends and I got a hold of a digital camera, shot several views of ourselves, and played quake with those altered skins. It was a lot of fun. It's kind of a fun thing if you are
;-)
A) Addicted to Quake.
B) Want to do it.
C) Have an afternoon to blow with some kids, and don't want to give them beer
Eh...
To quote Shaft, "You damn right." ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Maybe....or how about a scan of the ATF agent and the guy that was holding Elian in the picture?
Hmm...or how about some type of capture the flag where Elian is the flag?
That would be so cool! Elian is the flag, Janet Reno, Marileysis, Lazaro, the fisherman dude, the dad, and Fidel Castro could be avatars!
Does this
Like in the movie TRON.
Then I can take on the MPAA^H^H^H^H MCP and beat it at it's own game...
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
...with doom.
I used a hand-held scanner and snanned a picture of my face.
Then got one of those patches like the energizer bunny rabbit, but this one bent over and shot flames out it's butt.
Then I used an editor to comine my face to all the pictures then installed the patch.
It was a total hoot.
I thought I was being accurate not funny...damn...I guess I just gotta be more accurate in the future!
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
On a completely unrelated topic (ok, no), do they still make LSL games?
-JimTheta
My stupid web site
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner.
For some real fun scanning your face, start with your left cheek on the scanner, and as the scanning head moves, slowly turn your head so that your right cheek is touching the scanner when the scan is complete.
Creates some... shall we say... interesting results.
To really make an efficient use of such techniques in the given situation, you would really be more suited to program the behaviors of such targets, like in simulations used for experimental/business/military applications. Though I am not sure how to say it tactfully in reference to something so tragic as the afformentioned thread. I hope that I haven't offended anyone.
Eh...
Playing with legos. Voliently I might add. You think them leaving those sharp lego in the middle of the floor at night when you are in your bare feet was an accident....
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I would NOT LOVE a screenshot of myself standing over a lava pit with a rocket launcher. And a G-string.
However that would be quite funny (IF I actually fit the stereotypical geek profile).
No, 1000 x 10^3 is a thousand thousand, ie a million. A milliard is a thousand million. And a mallard is like a hammer.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I thought you brits used the million->milliard->billion system instead of the million->billion->trillion system?
The NHS is an excellent system, but it needs cash, badly. I'd gladly pay an extra 10% tax on my grossly inflated earnings, if that was what it took. Sadly, now that the age of conviction politics has given way to soundbite politics, that will never happen.
Well said. My father was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, by his NHS doctor (caught early). He was given all the options, and followed the consultant's recommendation to have it completely removed. He was taken into hospital and treated superbly by the best team of doctors in the country for this condition. His hospital stay was short and pleasant (as pleasant as any hospital stay can be) and he is almost fully recovered.
It's fashionable in the UK to bash the NHS, but it really is excellent in most cases. Yes it has its problems, but I simply cannot imagine the situation if he had to pay for treatment. He could not have afforded it.
And yeah, I know this is off-topic, but I've wanted to get this off my chest for ages.
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
This is vastly simpler then trying to fit yourself into your buddies' flat bed scanner.
Another possibility would be to lure your boss into one of these 3-d scanners so that you could take pot shots whenever you wanted.
Or, even better - add this to the DOOM-sysadmin interface to add user's faces to the processes that they spawned, and are littering your machine - that way you could get some real personal job satisfaction doing your sysadmin work.
- passion
The models are supplied in their own custom format. There is software at http://www.vapourtech.com/products/software/avanew /avanew_install.exe
which will convert these to Half-Life, but not Quake 3. Does anyone know how to convert them to Quake 3? I will pay a visit to the Dome tomorrow if I can get one in Quake 3 format.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
"Actually, I _do_ live there. And some of the state healthcare systems are _really_ good."
Please, elaborate on the systems of medical rationing that is practiced in some European countries. For instance, why does the NHS of England have some people waiting up to two years for gall bladder surgery. Or why do some Scandavian countries only allow a few treatments within their guidelines but ignores other, possibly life saving treatments because they are either too expensive or not on the plan?
"At least, when Europeans do finally get to hospital, then they are there until they're cured or dead, as opposed to when the insurance runs
out."
My brother-in-law has a brain tumor. His insurance company will no longer pay for all of his treatment as it is considered terminal. He continues to be treated at MD Anderson, one of the world's finest cancer treatment and research facilities regardless of his ability to pay. I have yet to see any hospital turn away a patient in the US or not do the most they can to save the patient. Your friend was the victim of an illegal practice and my sympathies are with him and his family. My own father died in 1995 because of a "medical oversight". That was not the fault of the government or the insurance company, but that of shortsighted, uncaring doctor. No legislation can demand compassion or a conscience.
"The NHS is an excellent system, but it needs cash, badly. I'd gladly pay an extra 10% tax on my grossly inflated earnings"
In my opinion, you pay too much in taxes already, in some European countries as much as 60% of your income *before* paying your own bills - rent, food, utilities, etc. Why not hammer on your elected officials to spend the money more wisely? Or better yet, why not insist they get rid of the overhead (overpaid unions, local restrictions, etc) which lead to money being spent on adminstration and not on patients?
If the government cannot provide the best possible service than they either need to get out of the business or allow open competition from the private sector. Throwing more money into a losing scheme is a waste and saves no_lives.
Ever played paintball? You're in real life, your shooting your friend, but they're not real bullets. This is at least as real (if not more so) than fragging your friend in Quake.
In short, I wouldn't worry about it.
I think it's stupid to even mention Columbine with a reference to Quake.
Get real, I've been playing Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Warcraft, Starcraft, Blood, Unreal, and many many many others.
I never had a friggin friend growing up. Those kids were just stupid, whiny, sniveling bastards and the world is just too arrogant to admit that yes, populations do have screwed up individuals. So instead, lets blame video games?
And maybe if those kids could have skinned their school mates they wouldn't have gone on a murder spree?
But you do have a good point with the celeb skins,
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
2 questions:
Did anyone find a screenshot of one of these things?
Secondly, if they scan me and give me the file, who own copyright over my image/avatar?
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
"Futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
Anyone know any good papirazzi's in the Redmond, Washington area?
for Q3.. then games would be 19 vs the dude with the romero skin.
------
When death looks you in the eye, smile. Someone needs to cheer him up.
That just gave me an idea. Embed the DeCSS source in a skin :)
That's because they are downgraded to Halflife skins (okay, I know squat about games, but that's the official "game avatar" format that you download from the site). The original format (you can view examples on Avatarme.com) has a high resolution (although the java demo is *dern* slow).
Go to "Download Avatar", and then choose the link at the bottom: "view these examples".
It'd be neat to map these into a vCard type open format, and then display them when you read someone's email.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
So you get your avatar scanned and it's pretty realistic? how long until there's a MI5 or NSA spider out there, patiently collecting them and collating them with our other personal data?
I'm sure they would find these very useful when cross-referenced with video footage of 'undesirables'.
The company has the target of "incubating avatars of people from 25% of US households within 6 years"
just another paranoid .02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I would LOVE a screenshot of myself standing over a lava pit with a rocket launcher. And a G-string.
Yes but, would we love a screenshot of you in a G-string?
What kind of internet connection can you get there?
so, does this mean I^Hanyone can play Unreal naked? I mean I^Heverybody already does, but these new skins are going to give a whole new meaning to the pelvic thrust taunts. 8)
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
"Studies show that kids who 'kill their friends' using this technology are highly volitile, and dangerous."
If a boy were to post a website with photos/models of his friends to 'destroy' in Quake and the school finds out about it, what do you think is going to happen? Bad things my friends, bad things. And we thought the kid being suspended for a critizing web page was bad. Or how about the kid punished for his personal web site.
Things like this sound cool, look great, and end up hurting people because of ignorant people. Not stupid people, just ignorant to the fact that they think we can't seperate computers and reality. So...what else is new?
Here's information about the attacks in New York, which happened on Sunday after the Puerto Rican Day parade.
If you're using Internet Explorer, there's a pretty neat demo at www.avatarme.com. You might need a fast PC to take full advantage of it.
For more information, click here.
Make a map of your office, then use co-workers faces and setup a game on the local lan...
Also what if you scan Bill Clintons face into Quake and then frag him with a rocket launcher....
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I think this may have some interesting implications in how photorealistic skins impact gender and gaming. Looking back at an article from last February, Men Playing as Women, you'll find some really interesting replies in the comments section that apply here as well.
For instance, a photorealistic skin doesn't guarantee that the person you're playing with actually was the model for that skin, and thus there's no guarantee whether he/she actually is male or female. But players may be more willing to believe in an assumed gender (even if only on a sub-concious level) when it looks like a real-life person.
For instance, Gender can be used for in-game advantages -- some Males may hesitate to shoot a female, others become more hostile if killed by a female. Females may pretend to be male to avoid being hit on or harassed, and both sexes may pretend to be opposite genders for role-playing or exploration reasons. Take a look at the old article, there are a lot of interesting ideas in it.
The incident involved a bunch of horny men attacking women in Central Park in New York. You can read more Here
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
And if you check out the latest patch for Q3 (if you haven't updated the boxed version) there are 4-5 'skins' of some of the guys at id. "Look - I'm Carmack!"
I was always hoping Steed would post a HOWTO on how the common guy could do this... probably never happen now :(
No thanks.
I certainly see a game as more realistic than my parents might... It's like when you played those old arcade games, you knew it was a spaceship but they didn't have a clue. Just like that Simpson's episode with Grampa and bart playing on a games console.
Skins or objects, we are still just talking about replacing the default purdy pictures with a picture of yourself, which is very fun for LAN deathmatches and can make chat rooms a little more spiffy, but is not exactly going to create a mad rush to have ourselves pixelated.
Why the hell would I want my beer gut to be carefully rendered in 3d anyway? If I was creating a skin of myself for a game, I would probably use photoshop or gimp to slim myself down first.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
We would use dialups, and modify the base skins in the original quake. Not like using a skin system.
Eh...
We have a similar system at school that we use in a lab, still... You get the idea.
Eh...
Actually, the parallels here to Napster are staggering. It's already well-established in American law that you can't commercially exploit a famous person's likeness without permission (there's fair use, like Celebrity Slugfest, but commercial use doesn't ever intersect with fair-use that I know of).
So, what we have is a game (Quake) provided by a company that built in functionality that could be used for illegal purposes, and doesn't restrict or even attempt to restrict use of said functionality.
Obviously, the RIAA and MPAA should sue iD Software and give them lists of Quake users who might be using the software in such a manner (i.e. all of them), then demand that their access to online Quake be cut off.
(This is a test of the Slashdot Sarcasm System. In the event of a real opinion, you will be subpoenaed and arrested by hired thugs. This is only a test. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.)
-- Old Man Kensey
I got a nice picture of Jesus in my bible, I am surpised he has yet to become a Quake 3 skin, that and where is Satan and Budda, or the Columbian boys, why aren't there Quake3 skins of these.
Oh you mean that thing called "taste and manners" is stoping people from doing it? So is that a bug in the human brain?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Because of the limited number of skins at the time, most of us had the choice of the Tim, Xian, and Sarge skin, because that is about the only skins they had. What was scary is that the Tim skin looked nearly EXACTLY like him. And, in my opinion, was the best player amongst the gathered group. Hence, you learned to run away if you saw Tim running towards you. It was very strange to be running around, and run right into someone you recognize from the real world.
However, for a team play game that involved pushing a button to get points, we ended up playing almost all the same skins, so the effect was much stranger to see 3 Xian's running around. `8r)
Anyway, it has been maintained from the begining that id software is able to create photorealistic skins, and that they will provide instruction on how to create your own. There is a PC gamer issue out there discussing that as well.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Are USPS workers required to pass a weapons qualification test?
kren
krenshala
Hm, does this mean that all the people who play SimCity will turn out to be mayors? Scary...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I wonder how long it will be before we can get a skin of Natalie Portman pouring hot grits down her pants...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Hmm, last I heard, it was to be torn down in 2001.
And call me cynical, but that's a whole lot of prime land there ready for the sale once the Dome has been removed...
Bah, I bet you don't spend all of *your* money on 'useful' things!
No, I don't. But before I buy my indulgences and techno fripperies, I make damn sure that I've paid my rent, bills and put food on the table.
I can regale you with countless tales of family members and friends who have waited forever trying to get medical treatment for severe conditions. Or you can look at how healthcare in the UK racks up to the rest of Europe and the world - the NHS sucks. Maybe one medical centre of excellence won't help this overnight, but I'm pretty sure my mother won't feel any improvement of her condition by going to the Dome.
I wonder how you'd feel if you lived where I'm from, and needed emergency medical attention.
They closed down the local A&E ward 3 miles from my home village; nearest is 15 miles. 12 miles extra is a long way for a defibrillator to travel if your heart has stopped...
pointlessly giving people arts degrees, for example
That is an entirely different argument, but I'll take a nibble - the government is not funding higher education as much as it was. I am _still_ paying my student loans off (been working 5 years on _good_ money), and I read Computer Science. So I doubt many people are burdoning the state as much as you think with "pointless" degress
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
You mean Quakeworld (yuck) or Quake2 (gag). But the original NetQuake (yeah!) didn't allow for skins
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Being a skinny white FE-male with glasses, can I come if I promise to wear my Domme gear? ;-)
I would LOVE a screenshot of myself standing over a lava pit with a rocket launcher. And a G-string.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
in all seriousness, is this a good thing? now, instead of just fragging some avatar of your buddy, you're fragging a look-alike. does this disturb anyone else but me?
This is only a problem when you have people playing who can't seperate fantasy (or at least video games) from reality.
There are always those kinds of people. I remember reading some cyberpunk book (or was it a text blurb in the RPG?) where there was a fictional anecdote about someone who hunted down and killed his boss in cyberspace every night to relieve tension, and flipped one day and did it in real life. The only difference between fantasizing about it and doing it in VR is that doing it in VR is kind of like training for the real event, but I doubt that it's psychologically more damning.
That, however, is something for the head shrinkers to mull over. If I wanted to go into psych, I would have stayed in college.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is about the only thing worth going to in the entire place. Only expect to wait for 4 hours to get a go on this - tourists, tourists, tourists, and schoolchildren everywhere.
I wish they'd used the money instead to create the "Millenium Hospital" or "Millenium Digital Library" instead of this one off pile of shit they wasted our tax money on.
(Note to US moderators - check the BBC news site for old articles about how most of the UK populace _really_ didn't want this folly.)
It's cool tech, but wasn't worth the effort.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
does anyone see this as good? it's disturbing enough seeing Fat Bastard with a railgun... do we really want to actually see who we're fragging?
in all seriousness, is this a good thing? now, instead of just fragging some avatar of your buddy, you're fragging a look-alike. does this disturb anyone else but me? as for fragging the Gallaghers, wouldn't they have to get scanned in?
better realism in skins are a good thing - i just don't think they should be going this direction. i'd much rather see a photo-realistic skin of, say, Jar-Jar (frag away!) than one of my buddies down the hall.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
Hey. anyone out there got/seen a tux quake skin? (kinda like the penguin computing shot with the rocket launcher). i've looked around and havent seen one. man that would be cool...
okay. let's clear things up. model = 3d object player model = 3d object with animations skin = painted texture applied to model. as for Jar Jar, I actually made a Quake 2 model of it which was, unfortunately, never finished. I've thought about doing it for Quake 3, and even had some requests for that, but that's not really feasible due to the three-part model system Quake 3 has... the head model can't have any animations, and that can't be changed, so Jar-Jar's ears would be poking through his body pretty much all the time, and that'd be uuuugly.
Oh, what I'd give.....
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
I know I wouldn't want my friends seeing mine, at
least the ones who haven't already seen it for
whatever reason. Not knowing how your friends
you've never met in person look allows you to
have a bit more imagination. Besides, half the
fun is pretending to be someone who you aren't
normally in face-to-face encounters. If you
look like you when you're playing Quake, you
lose that.
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
For something a little different, scan in your favorite anti-hero: Hot Grits Boy, Bill Gates, Natalie Portman, script kiddies, etc. and frag away...
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates Yeah Right!
you misread; this is Quake *three*. It's full 32-bit color, no palette.
FYI, 32-bit is merely 24-bit color with an 8-bit alpha channel added for transparency effects.
Does this mean we could scan a photo or movie of Elian Gonzalez in and frag the little puke for dominating TV with his lame-ass whiny story?
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
They company that makes this notes the Snow Crash reference in their faq.
-------
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"It was people! People soiled our green!"
Hmmm... I hadn't though about doing a full-body skin, but now that you mention it...
And could we get customized weapons skins? As in, could I skin the railgun, make it look like I'm carrying around a wombat instead wildly firing projectiles out of its butt?
I don't care if I do need a personal network to do that. I'll build a network if that's what it takes to make the wombat thing happen.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Rare was going to put this same feature in Perfect Dark (an unbelievably fine console game for the N64). You were going to be able to take a picture of your face with the Game Boy Camera (how's that for vertical marketing) and drop your pic onto the characters maps. In, what I believe to be a, wise decision, Rare pulled the feature at the last minute. Something about kids taking pictures of classmates and pasting them onto the enemies they were about to exterminate didn't seem like the best publicity.
I would agree with the person that said this technology could be better used in the communications industry. I don't see how hunting and gunning down a photorealistic model of someone can be A Good Thing.
Peace. Sway
Peace. Sway
OK, we need the paranoid point of view, so here it is. I have been saying for a few years that we aren't far off in computing ability to make the Running Man scenerio a real possibility. While it might be really neat to have yourself scanned so that you can plug it into a game, you need to ask yourself who might have access to your scan besides you? I would imagine that the scanning process is hi res enough so that someone with enough computing power could insert you into security camera footage and make it look real. So much for an alibi. I imagine that the Spooks are drooling over this and are trying to figure out how to incorporate high speed scans into something like airport metal detectors. Before you discount me as a paranoid anti-government freak, ask yourself if the capabilities are real.
Will Andover pay for John Katz to fly out to have this skin made, and where can we download it?
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
So, when is Playboy going to start including a CD-ROM with Killcreek skins? And even better, appropriate "weapon" mods (Hmm... BFD, anyone?). I think we can leave some of the kill messages unchanged, however -- they actually seem pretty approriate for something like this.
"This is my rifle, this is my gun. This one's for fighting, this one's for fun..."
According to the BBC today, the dome was a few days away from bankruptcy when it last got some money from the National Lottery, so it ain't making money for itself.
I also doubt it's pulling tourists in from abroad very much, by itself - who'd travel to the UK just to see the dome? This applies too to far-flung parts of Britain - apparently only 800 people from Scotland visited the dome in one month. It might be attracting Londoners, but they'd probably spend their money elsewhere if they didn't visit the dome. From an economic point of view, the dome is a flop.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
In one paragraph of "Beavis and Butthead" -esque sarcasm, he neatly expressed exactly how much impact this "technology" will really have on the world.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Why the hell would I want to get myself scanned? I never see my self when I'm playing, but if I could make everyone else look like my boss, I can garauntee an increase in my Frag Count.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
We just need scaling down a bit. See here.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Ugh. We see 4 screenshots from these guys that all look like ass. Gah! Any monkey with a digital camera can slop a blurry photo of a face onto a 3d model but it takes an artist to make it look good. (I should know, being a character modeler/painter at a game company.) The models are badly proportioned, mapped horribly, and the faces just look blurry and dumb. AvatarMe thinks that they'll incubate "25% of US households within 6 years?" Gimme a break.
-WG
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
"No kidding, now you can have your face and body realistically mapped into your favourite game - the potential is staggering..."
Yeah... Yeah! Uh, YEAH! You could uhh... Stick your face into a video game... or... a chat program... or even... a chat program... oh wait, I said that. Wait, hasn't that all been done before, so, what we're really talking about is matching yourself up with Quake's relatively limited palette, which was designed to not hog the resources of older systems, yet still look nice and menacing... Yeah, ok, so, it's pretty basic stuff... Yeah, oh well.
(P.S. You are allowed to laugh, no, I'm not cracking on the article or the tech, it's just... Well, yeah, maybe a little.)
Eh...
Twisted as it may be, this does pose a good point-- if you can use a photo to do this, then you can skin anyone into your games. Maybe the colombine kids would've targeted more specific real people if they'd been practicing with them as virtual targets. On another hand, will Cindy Crawford try to stop people from skinning her likeness into Panty Raider? Will Heston want his face skinned behind the gun of some new games as a promotional thing? Will the guy who incessantly bombards us with "Whassssuup!" sue to keep his face off of the targets?
Do something about world hunger. Click here
now there will be a whole bunch of photo-realistic skinny white males with large glasses and names like DrPOisOnSkULL and dEATHwarrant on my local quake server...
They look like pretty low quality textures to me. Do games players eventually adapt and evolve some kind of upconverting filters in their eyes so that this stuff looks photoreal to them - like the way people at SGI used to be able to filter out the dithering in their old machines and the way Sony people filter out anti-aliasing on their game machines.
--
-- SIGFPE
I've heard the claims that kids shoot people after playing these video games... but where are the kids who should be creating giant walls after playing tetris??
Wheeeee
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner. Face only, of course, but surprisingly good, nonetheless. All this talk of photorealistic skins reminds me of a former job where we used to play doom at lunchtime. We scanned a picture of one guy's baby in, and used that in place of the flaming skulls. He could never quite bring himself to blow his baby away with a shotgun, which gave the rest of us an advantage in multiplayer games with monsters...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
They're literary devices. If you take everything for granted, you have no book
My friends put me into the original Quake. One day I got onto the server to play and I was killing myself all over the place!
They did fire a bunch of people and moved their headquarters to Seattle. But they do still make games. I've got a friend who's a programmer there, so there's at least one internal devlopment team (probably several, but I don't know what other than his is ongoing), plus they publish Half-life and Homeworld, among others, and distribute Blizzard's games. They're doing alright. As for LSL, no idea. But it was funny question given the context.
One girl went with a "slightly enhanced" version of herself, while a k3wl d00d she was talking to used a floating "wizzard of oz" style Death Head, complete with a text slogan meant to show how 1337 she was (but was lost in the translation).
Where both authors go wrong (IMHO) is when they assume that this stuff will be a big deal, and costly to come by. Later in the book, that same girl has to obtain some virtual formal wear for another meeting, and IIRC she could barely afford it.
What Gibson and Stephenson seem to miss is that we are already expressing emotions and editing our "presentation" for our avitars, even in text environments like MUD's. Avitar clothes and facial expressions will continue to evolve along with the rest of the technology, and on-line chat users will continue to take them for granted.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
All those bitmap jaggies in the corner of my pants itch like crazy.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Okay, so I post information first, AND post a link relevant to the story, and I'm score 1, offtopic. He posts a link afterwards, using the word "horny," with NO content relevant to the story, and gets score 2, funny?
Guess it's just one of those days.
For more information, click here.
For instance, Gender can be used for in-game advantages -- some Males may hesitate to shoot a female,
A weakness, they deserve to die. If you can't shoot a female model in Quake, you're an idiot.
others become more hostile if killed by a female.
A weakness, they deserve to die. Focus your rage on them, and forget about me, your mistake.
Females may pretend to be male to avoid being hit on or harassed,
A weakness, they deserve to die. Try shooting some one. It'll make you feel better.
and both sexes may pretend to be opposite genders for role-playing
A weakness, they deserve to die. Go play Ultima or some crap.
or exploration reasons.
A weakne... HUH?!?
This would have no effect on the Gamers I know, and no realy social implications in any of the games I've played. I don't check out the bods on Female Quakers, I frag em.
As Cartman put it... "If a girl tried something like that with me, I'd be like hey, get your bitch ass back in the kitchen, and make me some pie"
No offense to the RL Females, of course.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
One of the cool things about the Metaverse in Snow Crash was the ability to have your avatar actually look like you. As I recall though, it was the ability of the avatar to display emotions via facial expressions that really set the technologic elite apart from the common rabble.
What would it take to get scanned into that one?
OT, but what horrid incident in new york? Sounds interesting.
/.'d
& On-Topic - anyone have mirrors of the pics above? has been
I would love a skin of JonKatz, instill more hatrid then JarJar!