Map your face with Kinect in Xbox One games

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With Xbox One, Kinect is always staring at you, silently judging you. But having an integrated camera system with a console has its benefits. For example, you'll be able to inject yourself into upcoming Xbox One games.

At a Comic-Con panel, Microsoft showed off how it could possibly work. Using Kinect, Nick Burton, lead of new technology at Rare, produced a mask of his own face that could be mapped to in-game models. "You can now import your own face geometry and even your BMI onto character models in the games," a report by IGN points out.

"The whole game also tracks your face during gameplay and will reproduce your real life facial expressions on the in game models," the report added.

Rare is no stranger to importing real-life players into games. Not only was the developer responsible for the stylized Avatars on Xbox 360, but the company experimented with face-mapping with the Game Boy Camera as well. Rare had planned to use the peripheral to import faces for use in Perfect Dark's multiplayer on N64--but that was eventually scrapped.

Because these are so-called "system level features" and will be available to any game that chooses to use them. Seems like it's time to hit the gym--you do want to look your best in front of Kinect, right?

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 21, 2013 12:00 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Map your face with Kinect in Xbox One games.

    With Xbox One, Kinect is always staring at you, silently judging you. But having an integrated camera system with a console has its benefits. For...

    • reply
      July 21, 2013 12:15 PM

      will be curious to see how well it works. EA tried to do face mapping years ago with older console cameras accessories for sports games (that were much worse hardware) and it did not work so well...

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        July 21, 2013 12:24 PM

        i remember when they had the option to customize faces in the PC versions of the NHL games. it worked out alright but then again, required you to upload photos. i think that's how it worked, it's been a decade since then.

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          July 21, 2013 1:09 PM

          yeah I just don't think their models were designed at all to just stretch a facial image over it so it came out pretty goofy. Would be awesome if it works though. Will add a cool touch to franchise/superstar modes

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          July 21, 2013 1:14 PM

          I made a mistake once of modeling my own height, 5' 7", into an NHL game had to go back because during the opening camera cuts my only showed the top of his helmet at the bottom of the frame next to the other very tall NHL players haha.

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      July 21, 2013 12:20 PM

      Reminds me of the early days of ShackTac where we manually put our faces unto the player models for Operation Flashpoint.

    • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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      July 21, 2013 12:24 PM

      Be cool to see if it works, but then games, GTA etc would have to support it.

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      July 21, 2013 12:47 PM

      That be badass if Titanfall and Sunset Overdrive use this feature.

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      July 21, 2013 12:51 PM

      [deleted]

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        July 22, 2013 10:08 AM

        You know the more I look into this, if a court has a warrant to search your records, MS and others would have to comply. Still, MS seems to want to enable the NSA by saying you must be online connected and must have the camera.

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      July 21, 2013 12:53 PM

      [deleted]

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      July 21, 2013 12:56 PM

      Wasn't it the RB6: Vegas series you could do that with? That was hilarious!

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        July 21, 2013 6:46 PM

        Yeah it worked pretty well for what it was.

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        July 22, 2013 11:29 AM

        Yeah, it would also sync up your lip movement with your voice in chat. Which was friggin hilarious the first time I noticed a buddy's avatar talking to me while in the chopper before a mission.

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