Minority Report is the inspiration for creating 3D cameras that will initiate a new tipping point for virtual worlds, according to Mitch Kapor. I recently reported on this development, linking over to an employee’s blog post where he stated the project’s aim:
The objective of the project is to dramatically change the way users interact with online virtual worlds. The online world (or metaverse or MMO or whatever you want to call it…) in question for this project being, of course, Second Life.
Meanwhile, Mitch spoke about the project, coverage of which on CNET included the following rather provocative image:
“So, if I look to the left in the real world, I just want my avatar to look to the left,” Kapor said. “If I smile, I just want my avatar to smile. The cameras should be good enough to pick that up. I think we’re going to see an amazing jump in the sense of presence.”
Another experiential improvement the cameras could offer, he said, could be a better way to edit 3D objects.
“It’s going to change how editing is done in 3D worlds,” he said, “if you can reach in and grab the handles of an object and pull them out with your hands and extend or change the shape of the object.”
The potential of the 3D camera goes beyond mapping facial expressions to your avatar (which would need a rewrite of part of the Linden code, something that strikes terror in the hearts of the lag whiners) and moves SL into opportunities for augmented reality, especially as the protocols continue to improve for integration with real-time data and HTML on a prim.
If anyone stumbles across demo videos on youTube share them!
There’s an element of this in demo clips for some Logitech webcams, eg:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r7Gn2TyEyHw – begins with facial attachments (eyepatch, monocle, etc), then moves into complete replacement avatars. Unfortunately, the guy doesn’t move around too much, but the facetracking can still be seen. The software manages reasonably well with tracking lips and eyebrows, too, though sometimes seems to give people something of a tic. None the less impressive for that, though!
Yes, thanks for that. There’s an interesting discussion over at Croquet about some of this as well so it seems like there’s growing work on the interface devices. Emotiv is getting a lot of play and there was another device out of Germany that worked off brain waves as well. Should be an interesting year for the, um, controllers.
3D cameras sound as a nice thing. Though “augmented reality” and some of the expectations are actually a bad and clumsy idea, nice, simple to use and affordable mocap hardware could improve the world and our communication. We’ll see how development of both hardware and the interface will go. After all, it’s all about what we want to achieve.