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.

Comments

I did it!

[Signal 11]

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?!

Re:I did it!

[Pike]

You better shut up and get back to work before your user finds out :-)

Re:Dome Heads!

[GregWebb]

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.

Leisure Suit Larry???

[JimTheta]

On a completely unrelated topic (ok, no), do they still make LSL games?

-JimTheta

Re:Oh boy,

[jbarnett]

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....

Re:Oh boy,

[generic-man]

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.

Photorealistic Skins and Gender

[Guppy]

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.

Already been done...

[GoNINzo]

Around 6 months before Q3A came out, I got the unique chance to alpha test Quake 3 Arena in Dallas at id software. I ended up playing with Blue and Redwood, along with Tim Willits and Christian 'Disruptor' Antkow. Oh, and meet most of the rest of the group. And John Cash is the nicest guy in the world!

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

Dome Heads!

[deefer]

I've been to the Dome.
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.

Bad Thing

[Lightwarrior]

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

the dome was a few days from bankruptcy

[divec]

it generates a lot of money from tourists

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.

Of course, as you say, there's more to it than just economics, and there may be other things about the dome which are good. Personally I think they shouldn't have put it in London - London already has thousands of landmarks and adding just one more won't make much difference. It'd've been much more spectacular in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Newcastle or Glasgow (though the last two are probably less good because they're not very central in the UK).

I need help...

[tringstad]

...convincing my boss to take a trip to the Millenium Dome.

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

Staggering Potential

[Dungeon Dweller]

"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.)

great...

[matticus]

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...

Re:Oh boy,

[heliocentric]

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??

Flatbed scanners

[Tet]

This is vastly simpler then trying to fit yourself into your buddies' flat bed scanner.

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...