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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 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.
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
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
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.
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;
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.
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.
On a completely unrelated topic (ok, no), do they still make LSL games?
-JimTheta
My stupid web site
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
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
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
"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.
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.
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...
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
I wonder how long it will be before we can get a skin of Natalie Portman pouring hot grits down her pants...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
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?
Oh, what I'd give.....
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
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.
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"'
"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
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!
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.