Face and head tracking for Second Life avatars
by Tateru Nino 
Dec 1st 2008 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Betas, News items, Second Life
For those of you who are keen on hands-free avatar expressiveness in the virtual environment of Second Life comes a surprise third-party viewer from vr-wear.com. This beta viewer for Windows or Mac OSX uses a camera to track your head and expressions, and convey that to your avatar.
At present, it is all a little rudimentary, and there isn't any back-end support for sending much in the way of ad-hoc avatar motion through the Second Life servers, so the system is limited to what can be supported. At present, that appears to be lip-sync, nodding and head-shaking, surprise and smiling, and head-tilting to the left or right.
The Web-site itself is a little confusing, and some of the links just go nowhere. The software is available under several licenses including the GPL (though it doesn't say which version) depending on your intended usage. We were unable to locate any source code (there are working download links for the binaries, but the link for the download page itself is busted).
The download bundles are based on viewer versions 1.20.11 (Windows) and 1.20.17 (Mac OSX) and appear to contain a number of potentially non-redistributable components. We're not sure what the status of that is, honestly.
As always, you should consider the risks before installing third-party binaries on your system.
[Thanks Vint Falken]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kara Spengler said on 12:23PM 12-01-2008
I wonder if they use the iSight on the macs or require a seperate USB camera?
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Ari Blackthorne said on 2:08PM 12-01-2008
I usually run SL from my Windows (XP!) box - as that's all it's good for. Though SL actually runs stunningly on my MacBook Pro - but I use that one to actually be productive.
I saw a comment on Vint's blog (same subject matter) where someone tried it with the iSight built-into an iMac.
I intend to try it tonight with my MacBook - I'll report back here (if I remember) - or at least drop a blurb on my blog (commonsensible.net) later.
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Kara Spengler said on 1:43PM 12-02-2008
I was playing around last night and iGlasses is a nice software add-on to tweak the settings on an iSight. Then use other utilities to make it a webcam or record from.
Garn said on 6:00PM 12-01-2008
Didn't Torley make a video about something like this a while ago?
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Pavig Lok said on 7:45PM 12-01-2008
Garn: there's been several similar projects in the works, and I think Mitch Capor even demoed one at some point. This is the first I'm aware of though that has any kind of consumer level pluggableness to it. Everything else i've seen has been more "proof of concept".
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Nightbird Glineux said on 10:48PM 12-02-2008
I've thought about this, and I've decided its not for me.
I'm all for immersion (Tateru would prefer another word here) and improvements in puppeteering. But I think always following a camera or following a mouse is wrong. Anytime I look at a glass of soda RL, my avi's head will turn? That's as bad as watching my avi's head turn every time I use the Inventory or IM windows, or use a menu. I don't see how adding a second source of movement is an improvement.
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