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

Won't somebody think of the media?

[Txiasaeia]

Methinks this isn't going to be regarded too highly in the press. "Now you can scan your head and your friend's head into the game and kill each other!" "They're encouraging murder because they're killing virtual representations of their best friends!" Etc. etc.

As for the "mischevious gamers," I don't even *want* to think of what kinda "heads" they would appropriate in a game of SOCOM!

Virtual Light - Machinama?

[stoolpigeon]

First thing this made me think of is when the guy in Gibson's "Virtual Light" pisses off the hacker kids and they put his face on a guy in a nasty S&M kind of porno thing. That was a kind of out there idea in the '80s but it is getting more and more possible.

I would think the real kick in this would have less to do with getting your own face in a game and more to do with getting someone you don't like in a game. The machinama possibilities could be very, very interesting

DOOM and Bill Gates, LEGAL question ...?

[justanyone]

Hey - does this mean I can model Bill Gates' head onto the shoulders of all the monsters that I kill in Doom and Duke Nukem and all those First Person Shooter games?

I'm sure there's lots of people that would love to customize Doom and the other shooter games to add a picture of Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh (the alleged "big fat idiot deaf crackfiend" as I've heard various political 'extremists' call him), and other politicos.

Likewise, this applies to Leisure Suit Larry and Grand Theft Auto - putting specific faces on the people in the games. This could get legally complicated, couldn't it...?

I mean, since Cindy Crawford techically owns almost all of the images of her. Or, her photographers do. So, hypothetically, if I take a set of random headshots (prove which photographer took them!) grab data from it, encode it to become the prostitute character for Grand Theft Auto, then sell the product of this work as a derivative work, is it covered under copyright law as a derivative work, or have I stolen the likeness from the photographers?

Re:DOOM and Bill Gates, LEGAL question ...?

[mobby_6kl]

You mean something like this? Osama model for ut2003 (theres a screenshot on that page)

Re:I wonder...

[Aelfy]

The EyeToy has already sold *millions* of units here in the EU, and the unit itself has been in the top ten selling games in the UK for 29 consecutive weeks. (http://www.elspa.com/about/charts/charts.asp?d=20 040117&chartType=17)

They don't need you to buy it, the EyeToy is a hugely successful peripheral aimed squarely at the mainstream market.

Support for this system in games adds value to those games for those who already own an EyeToy unit, regardless of whether they like that genre or have ever heard of that game.

Non-human "faces"

[J_DarkElf]

Who's to say people will stop with humans? One could easily take a pic of their cat or dog and use that as an avatar...

And we'll see the furries on the PS2 as well.