Oh, p.s. I met up with someone at the CT Film Festival this weekend who confirmed that the whole body interactive demos by Microsoft? STAGED. Entirely a mock-up demo. The technology apparently works but they're no where near actual product demo.
-Ron / Hiro On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Ron Blechner<[email protected]> wrote: > The problem with the handshake: > > In short - it's 2 seconds worth of interaction. That's a tiny amount > of reward for a tremendous amount of work it would take to make it > better. And, there are already handshake and bow animations - they > don't line up with another avatar, but doing all the work to make > handshakes doesn't even create a new function - it just polishes an > existing one. > > Compare that with putting in effort to do better facial animations - > that would affect 100% of the time of interaction between two people. > And consider that facial animation programming is *client-side* by > nature, and doesn't require breaking apart and redoing the avatar code > in Second Life to the degree that handshakes / puppeteering does. > That's a helluva lot more results for a helluva lot less effort. > > I'd also like to add that, as Lawson pointed out, there is cultural > bias. According to Neilsen, there are 170 million Americans actively > using social media. There are twice that in China alone. China has 20% > of the world's population. Are we here to make a Western metaverse, or > a global one based on ideals not bound by one country, or one culture? > The reason we handshake instead of bow is because the West has > controlled the vast amounts of wealth in the world. Like it or not, > the West is spending its Wealth and a tremendous amount is going to > the East. In 20 years - we all may be bowing, like it or not. > > I don't want to ruffle too many features, but it's an important > exercise to escape one's own assumptions and biases when debating > functionality with a platform whose stated goal is to be "a new > country", as Rosedale would say. > > And to bring this back - the larger issue is that people tend to get > caught up in particular niceties like handshakes and miss > bigger-picture items. What good are handshakes if the rest of the > conversation is less meaningful because it lacks facial expression? > > I say, FORGET puppeteering. Forget handshakes. Let's focus our efforts > on something much easier to accomplish, and with far more impact on > Second Life. Facial expressions from video. > > *runs off to blog these thoughts* > > > -- > Ron Blechner > Chief Technology Officer > Involve, Inc > www.involve3d.com > SL: Hiro Pendragon > > > p.s. PLUG! http://secondtense.blogspot.com > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Tateru Nino<[email protected]> wrote: >> Maybe it isn't really about handshakes, and more about general >> lining-up-of-body-parts between avatars? :) >> >> However, for most people in first-world western cultures, a handshake is the >> frequently sole form of socially allowable physical contact between two >> people who aren't intimates at some level. That makes it strongly symbolic. >> >> For handshake you can substitute a few variations: Knuckle-bumps, high-fives >> and such, but they're all basically a handshake with different emotional >> flavoring. >> >> Ron Blechner wrote: >> >> Question: >> >> Why are handshakes so important that they are much more of a topic of >> discussion of implementation, against facial expressions? >> >> -Ron / Hiro >> >> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Argent >> Stonecutter<[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On 2009-06-04, at 08:55, Jan Ciger wrote: >> >> >> Argent, read my comment to Tigro's mail. It wouldn't work. At least >> not >> in a nice way. For reaching and grasping you need much more IK than >> just >> the three arm joints and then you are hitting a severely >> under-constrained and computationally expensive problem. >> >> >> That's why you don't try and solve it computationally. You don't >> replace normal animation, you use this for minor adjustments to the >> existing animation, and you limit the strength of the adjustment to >> small angles and specific joints. >> >> So it's down to the person selecting the base animation and providing >> the strength and possibly range (either distance or angle). >> >> >> >> E.g. in one case I have seen the solver to keep the hands next to the >> avatar's waist but stick the waist forward to reach a goal. >> >> >> Wouldn't happen, unless the person selected the waist as the joint >> that would move, and unless the waist was already close to the goal. >> >> >> >> IK is a nice tool, but extremely hard to use unless you have an >> animator >> guiding it. >> >> >> Which is the point. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: >> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev >> Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting >> privileges >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Tateru Nino >> http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/ >> >> > -- Ron Blechner Chief Technology Officer Involve, Inc www.involve3d.com _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
