
Oculus Rift hack transfers your facial expressions onto your virtual avatar - 51Cards
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/05/oculus-rift-hack-transfers-your-facial-expressions-onto-your-virtual-avatar/
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tonydiv
This is a fundamental technology that will be core to social VR. I really hope
they nail it.

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moron4hire
Even something as simple as head gestures, which can be done with just about
every currently-known HMD, is hugely helpful in expressing emotion. Check out
AltspaceVR, it's pretty incredible. I had an hour-long conversation with
someone and even after the first 5 minutes it felt like we were just sitting
in Halloween costumes, talking to each other.

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tonydiv
I have tried Altspace many times :) We've built something similar in some
regards. We are helping people learn foreign languages in immersive
environments (including VR):
[http://learnimmersive.com](http://learnimmersive.com)

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zyxley
It would be really interesting to see something like this mixed with
commercial software like FaceRig
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/)).

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ahamino
There are a lot of players who are trying to commercialize facial expression
tracking. Notably, [http://affectiva.com](http://affectiva.com)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbO0Po8Mgis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbO0Po8Mgis)

disclaimer: I work for them.

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fsimoneschi2
Have a look at [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fove/fove-the-worlds-
fi...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fove/fove-the-worlds-first-eye-
tracking-virtual-reality)

They are working on a similar technology.

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kaitynotes
Eye tracking looks very promising. After seeing the video, I'm curious to see
how they plan on adding facial expression tracking.

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aberrantwolf
I think face tracking is planned for the version after the Kickstarter.

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fsimoneschi2
They will probably add some IR or optical camera beneath the headset. Not
quite sure if they can also pick up some face expression by using the eye-
camera as well (like smiling).

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egypturnash
One step closer to the Metaverse.

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jnem
If I were William Gibson, or even Neal Stephenson, I'd be sitting back right
now saying, "yup. Told ya".

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drzaiusapelord
Except they've been wrong almost universally in their career from a
predicative POV (which is a bad way to judge sci-fi, btw. They write dramatic
narratives, theyre not futurists trying to predict future tech, they're
storytellers). The reality is we don't know if this stuff will ever catch on.
Mounting a big black box on your face is limiting and unappealing to most.
Hardcore gamers? Probably will deal with it. Everyone else? Probably not.

There's also a fundamental issue here that's rarely addressed: that putting
meatspace conventions into virtual spaces rarely works out. I don't want to
have to wake up, dress, shower, etc my avatar so she can get in a car and
drive to the virtual mall to walk into the virtual store to buy stuff. I just
want to load up amazon.com and scroll to the product I want and one-click buy
it.

We tried Second Life, Playstation Home, etc and we didn't like them. Adding
whiz-bang 3D isn't going to help a largely failed and discredited concept. The
meta-verse is just annoyingly tedious and time-wasting. Those 80s visionaries
had no conception of what things like the web or mobile could be. They didn't
realize how powerful those technologies are (Hi, we're using it right now to
communicate instead of Second Life for a reason). So they projected this idea
of "just put people in computers" which helps a dramatic narrative as its easy
to understand but isn't very practical in real life.

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moron4hire
>> Mounting a big black box on your face is limiting and unappealing to most.

Honestly, everyone says that, until they try it with a good demo, and then
they stop caring about the box. The hurdle is getting people to try it. Once
they do, if they aren't the rare folks who are super-sensitive to motion
sickness, they are immediately hooked.

>> We tried Second Life, Playstation Home, etc and we didn't like them.

Who exactly is "we"? Second Life is not so popular today, but it was pretty
huge with some people for a very long time. The fact that it is still running
at all after 12 years is surely a testament to its popularity with some
people.

And I'm not going to use anything Sony makes as invalidation of any concept.

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esrauch
> The fact that it is still running at all after 12 years is surely a
> testament to its popularity with some people.

I think the fact that is still running is more of a testament to how much they
convinced large corporations and universities to spend enormous amount of
money on virtual land, rather than it's popularity or usability among end-
users.

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moron4hire
If you say so. I've never used it. The only people I now who are using it have
been using it forever and are still super psyched about it, and they're all
artist-type people, not corporate-shill-type people.

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munro
Awesome, this research project looks good to go! I could definitely see this
technology being integrated into VR headsets. The strain gauges could come
bundled, and the lower half camera could be built into the bottom, and
engineered to fit more flush.

Only potential stopper sounds like it requires lot of computation power to
measure the face.

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entwife
Is it necessary to have the screen/VR features of the Occulus Rift to do the
facial expression recognition? Or, is data from something more lightweight,
e.g. Google Glass, adequate to do facial recognition?

Looking forward to better virtual meetings, less flying.

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philtar
The facial recognition is from the Intel RealSense. Read the article.

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dvirsky
So when can we have our OASIS accounts and dystopian future?

