http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CFhfcjyks4

Given the way the economy has continued to slump, and recent reports of lay-offs within the entertainment community, you wouldn’t really expect a video game company to spend more time and more cash developing new technology just to make sure their characters’ smiles are convincing—but that’s exactly what one company is doing. Team Bondi and Rockstar Games have been using new facial-scanning technology to put a little more humanity into the characters of their upcoming game, L.A. Noire.

L.A. Noire is a detective game set in Hollywood during the 1940’s. The action centers around Detective Cole Phelps (voiced by Aaron Staton of “Mad Men”), while he attempts to unravel a series of mysteries amidst corruption and danger. Story is at the forefront of the game, and Cole (and the player) learns by talking to people. What makes L.A. Noire unique, however, is that in this game, the characters can lie. The team behind the game have taken painstaking steps to ensure that the characters have been given all sorts of “tells,” from shifty eyes to bitten lips, and they’ve done so with the help of MotionScan technology.

MotionScan uses 32 cameras, trained at nearly every possible angle, to capture an actor’s expressions, which are rendered into the avatar. So, whether Cole views another character from the ground, or from the side, or from whatever angle, the image is still believable, and that character’s expression is still readable. And that’s very important in a game hinged on these little details. Hopefully Team Bondi will be able to accurately match the captured expressions to body language and deliver a more realistic gaming experience. If they do, that will surely set a precedence in graphics for games in the future.

Tags: L.A. Noire, Rockstar Games, enhanced graphics for video game, Rockstar Games creates characters so real they can lie, video game characters can lie, lying video game characters, L.A. Noire introduces lying characters, MotionScan, facial-analysis technology gives video game characters realistic expressions, unusual video games, video games, cool stuff, Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire

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