EverQuest II to Map Your Face and Voice to Your Character via Webcam

[News Portal]

Here's one to file away under the heading of "Uh, okay then": SOE have announced the introduction of 'SOEmote' to EverQuest II, technology that reads your facial expressions via webcam and maps them to your in-game character, in real time. Along with your voice. "Any game that calls itself a roleplaying game absolutely needs this feature," says Director of Development David Georgeson. "For other games it’s just a really good idea that your players will want. Pick a character. Pick a class. And then be that character instead of just being yourself. That’s what a roleplaying game is supposed to be." Click on through to see a video of the technology in action.

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[Mythor]

It's amazing they can do this and awesome they're adding such a fancy feature to an older game.

But I get the feeling it will only ever be used for giggles. Like making your characters derp out while waiting for the rest of your group/raid to be ready.
The voice morphing thing will just get people kicked out of groups, I expect.

[WightGuy]

This looks awesome in my opinion, I used to play eq2 for about 3years. Sadly this has come a bit late for me since the game no longer interests me.

Still looking forward to see if they use this technology in their other games like...ZOMG! PLANETSIDE 2 or EQ3 or EQnext, whatever they're calling it.

[majkicCFC]

if they had this in my WoW days i would just zombie stare into it all day cuz thats pretty much my gaming face.

occasionally the OH FUUUUUUUUUUU face when im tanking a raid boss

[retaxis]

i kinda like the face thing, tis funny .
I thought the voice font was going to be like you can make your own voice emotes, like /silly's and stuff... that would be cooler then a stupid voice masking system (although I can see the technical aspect of it being very hard to implement without serious compression/downsides like lag).

[iambeanie]

This intrigues beanie, countless times in MMOs where i've wished i could put more expression into what i'm doing. Would definitely use if other developers put it into games that i play =-P.

[psychofruiterer]

mmmmm, something a bit fishy about that...

At two points in the video he puts both hands in front of his face enough to block some of his "key features" and it still tracks behind them perfectly...

[Marcus Dunn]

This is a really good idea - would love to see it in some of the newer titles.

[coatsy22]

mmmmm, something a bit fishy about that...

At two points in the video he puts both hands in front of his face enough to block some of his "key features" and it still tracks behind them perfectly...

Caution. long exposure to xrays can cause side effects

[vcatkiller]

Still looks kind of twitchy. I guess you could argue it's only beta footage but I've seen that kind of twitchy movement on already released webcam software, so I wouldn't expect much. If the lighting isn't perfect the face will just twitch all over the place by itself, I'm sure of it.

[600VoltBoyee]

Anyone else find that guy really creepy?