Webcam-Powered Facial Recognition Coming to Everquest II
Webcam-powered facial recognition tech is coming soon to EverQuest 2 (as you can see here), merging the movements of your head and the expressions of your face to those of your MMO avatar. "Hey Wagner James Au," MMO expert Scott Jennings just told me, "tell Rod Humble SL needs this tech, like, yesterday."
Sounds good: Hey Rod Humble, SL needs this tech, like, yesterday.
i was pushing for it back in 2007 - when logitech first came-out with it's facial avatars. and it would have been a perfect fit with puppeteering.
sigh.
Posted by: qarl | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 12:37 PM
Seems like a great way to invade privacy even more...
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 12:45 PM
People obsessed with privacy can never be pleased and should just disable or not participate in features they dislike. I think it's a great idea!
Posted by: Ehrman Digfoot | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 01:36 PM
They need to do something about the avatar mesh before anything like this can happen, the current emotes are AWFUL, and add in that the static barbie doll hands and feet, the rust on SL is really starting to show. But hey what do we know.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 01:47 PM
I think top priority for software makers is always make easier the good things users are trying to accomplish.
Something like this would assist greatly with machinima and live productions like the shows on Treet.TV. Doesn't even seem like it'd take much given heads and eyes can already move independent of playing animations if not overriden, and it'd complement the lip sync stuff nicely.
It could also simply make idle voice chat in Second Life more compelling.
Not sure how it'd be any kind of invasion of privacy. It'd just help those already faking this kind stuff for their purposes.
Posted by: Ezra | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 04:30 PM
Thing is, Rod Humble used to *work* on the Everquest games at Sony Online. So good chance he not only knows who's working on SoE's face recognition tech, he probably has their phone number too!
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Friday, June 01, 2012 at 04:40 PM
As I recall, Philip L was interested in this for the open source viewer after he stood down as CEO, the idea being that this was more available to SL users (and the Kinect had gone to Microsoft by that time anyway).
Posted by: Graham Mills | Monday, June 04, 2012 at 04:43 AM