HyFy Better Avatars?

You’ve probably seen the blogosphere discussing the work going on at HyFy (High Fidelity – Philip Rosedale’s new VW). The video everyone is on about is below.

The talk is about making the avatars look better. One of the HyFy staff, Ozan, is talking about what is being done. (Reference) The avatar shown in the video is NOT a good looking avatar, my opinion. BUT… the lip sync’ing is awesome and that is the point of this exercise.

Expect the avatars to get better with time. For now HyFy is doing the cutting edge stuff no one has done before, at least at this level. There are lots of people making pretty avatars. Expect that once the hard stuff is done they will clean up the skin and shape.

4 thoughts on “HyFy Better Avatars?

  1. Question is – do * I * want to feel like I am in the VW or want to watch a cartoon.

    The more the face moves and esp the eyes – the more cartoon it looks. When someone types how they feel – their words count – I can’t “feel” off of a fake face.

    The words come from a person’s mind – no way can facial images on an Ava reach me the same way.

    • You may be right. Philip thinks otherwise. I’ll wait and see what the final product looks like.

      • He’s a guy lol and they tend to focus on the technicals of how things look rather than how it makes you feel.

    • It’s not a “fake face” the facial expressions are read by a camera and translated into the same expression on the avatar. That’s the whole entire point behind the video. For now, all the hard work is going into reducing latency times so when you speak, you avatar speaks and responds to head and hand movements immediately. Better looking content is coming, but the vast majority of it will come from users like SL. Ozan is currently working to improve mouth movement.

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