EyeToy PS2 Camera To Use Digimask For 3D Faces

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for its article indicating that Sony has teamed up with Digimask to allow full 3D models of gamers' faces to be used in PS2 titles, providing the player has an EyeToy USB camera. The Digimask technology "allows gamers to take a couple of snaps of their own head with EyeToy and have them magically remodelled into a fully animated 3D head", and a number of unannounced games are in development using this technology, which might allow "...players to put their own face onto a player in a football game, or to [theoretically] fight against digital reproductions of their friends in online games of SOCOM." GI.Biz does, however, note: "Of course, there is the eternal concern that mischievous gamers will take pictures of, well, other body parts, giving the 'Personal Head Creation' technology a bad name."

Comments

Perfect Dark

[StocDred]

Perfeck Dark for N64 was supposed to include this sort of thing using the Game Boy Camera... but it was removed at the last minute. The official reason was that it affected performance of the game, but it was so close to Columbine that many figured that was why Nintendo had the feature stripped.

Obviously enough time has passed that companies aren't afraid to include "shoot your friends' digitized faces!" as a packaging bullet point.

The concern about "body parts" is understandable

[BigJimSlade]

While I don't have a specific reference nearby, an arcade game in the 80's did something similar with a camera for a high-score board. I'm pretty sure a number of players with the initials 'ASS' caused the demise of this product.

You know the old saying: Those who don't learn from history will do nothing butt repeat it.

<rimshot />

Re:Protect the children!

[Carnildo]

Nope. In a Supreme Court decision a few years back, it was ruled that digital representations of minors could not be classified as child pornography, since no real minors were involved.