WOWSA!!!!! Avatar trailer out

What Briana said - well what you said, too. If wiki says the first use of the word avatar was in the 1980s though, the info is incomplete. If it says 'as relates to computers' then okay.

Well, i rarely look at Wiki links unless it is related to relatively static information like Flags of Countries where personal opinion has no reflection on the information presented.

I quoted it: "As used for a computer representation of a user". I don't make this stuff up.

Sometimes.

1985 is 24 years ago. How time flies.

As I now understand the movie's plot, there is not a virtual world involved in the plot, and the avatar is not a virtual world character, but rather a physically existing cloned version of a physically existing real world alien. The human operators' consciousnesses are somehow moved to the cloned alien brain and body. I'd call it a form of telepresence.

If my interpretation is correct, this means the movie doesn't have a virtual world in it, and they probably don't want to emphasize the virtual-ness of what we will be seeing too much, because it's not supposed to strike us a real cool virtual world; it's supposed to strike us as real.

The movie's interpretation of an avatar is closer than you think. In Hindu mythology their Gods often made their presence known on earth, not simply by taking on a human form, but by taking over the body of an existing human.

In the movie the earthlings cannot visit Pandora natively, as its environment is lethal. So they clone a native alien that can live there. The clone is not from birth, like Dolly the sheep, but a clone of an adult alien, but without memories (which is what defines us). The memories of the earthling (who is a cripple) is transferred to the alien brain, and uses the clone as his 'avatar' in which to manifest himself on the surface of Pandora. However, he then finds himself in the midst of a regional conflict, but taking up with the beautiful alien of the cloned race, he inevitably takes sides, and the battle to end all battles (cinematographically) then takes place in the second half of the movie.

The mix of James Cameron, fantastic storyline, CGI, real people and stereoscopic 3D makes this piece of cinema an incredible experience, and my money is on this film being the biggest grosser of all time.

The term 'avatar' is suddenly becoming one of the biggest Google search terms, and of course Virtual Worlds such as SL, which come up in the first page of hits, will benefit from the interest.

Blue Mars could well launch around the same time as the Movie, and with similar fantastic landscapes to explore on some of the cities it will also likely benefit.

Rock

Did you hear that they have decided on the name for the sequel?

It will be called "Alt"!


James Cameron did not want the tie-in to Second Life to be too obvious so they compromised on the "Naked Cat Girls".

"The Alien Clone Tank" and "Alien Body Remote Control Unit" will not be available for purchase until after the movie's official release date.



jk

When I think of Avatar, what comes to mind is the TV show and upcoming movie "Avatar: The Last Air Bender."

Titanic made me want to slap her so hard.
Get on the baot
Get on the boat
Stay on the freaking boat.
Oh sure, she gets to watch him die in the end, but is she would have stayed on one of the freaking boats he would have been able to get up on the piece of wood but no, she was in the way because she kept getting off the freaking boats!

Bitch.

The only problem I had with "Titanic" was the amount of times they each said the others name. It seemed an excessive amount.

Jack...

Rose...

Jack...

Rose...

It seemed like in every sentence.

Ephraim Kappler roars laughing. I liked them better in Revolutionary Road.

So, who's made a Pandoran avatar yet?

OMG! I would SO watch that!!! Would depend if you can hear/read whats being said in-game too. I suppose though it'd be no different than watching SL Videos on Youtube.

I heard there's a 24 hour Starcraft channel in another country.

I giggle when I hear the title of that. It always makes me think its about passing gas.

Is the consciousness transferred to the alien clone, leaving an inert husk behind, or is the consciousness duplicated, meaning two autonomous copies of the consciousness are operating independently from each other?

There's another movie coming out, Surrogates, that involves telepresence.

I got the impression that it was some kind of psychic remote control with his body staying under some kind of suspended animation doohickey, given the flash of the guy on the ship after the Pandoran body gets killed.

I've had a try. With sculpty feet hiding mesh high heels, I managed about 2.5m tall, and I experimented with some drow & demonic skins that weren't to far off the Pandorans' (Na'vi, apparently). I'm not up to making a custom skin. The facial features were tricky, as the mesh controls don't let you create a long head while keeping the nose-chin distance as short as it looks on the female Na'vi. Over all it looked good, very striking and unearthly if not completely accurate. It'd be more impressive if the average human height in SL was under 7 feet.

I didn't like the Titanic either... probably due in large part to being forced to listen to the nasal rantings of Celine Dion on the soundtrack... (shudders). Honestly, the CGI work could have been much better too. But I may be overly critical here since I do animation work on occasion. And YES! He would have survived if it weren't for her!

But back on topic.... I did like the Avatar trailer - I'll be seeing it when it's released. Thanks for the link, Jesse.

Z

Isn't LL going on an "IP protection spree" now, stopping people from making stuff from books/movies without a license?

Oh, yeh, it'll have to be a "space elf" avatar.

Best part of the movie? The ship sinking. The rest was booooorrrrrinnggggg!!!

At least it hasnt fallen prey to a Hollywood Sequel.

As for Celine Dion- Blame Canada!!!!

Ever play Kingdom Hearts 2??

Everytime your party talks to someone they have to repeat the names over & over:

Sora, Donald, Goofy!!

Sora, Donald, Goofy!

Sora, Donald, Goofy!

Sora, Donald, Goofy!


I'm glad they do because, Gee!, I might forget who they are!!!

Traveller had those.. they were called "Darrians". >.>

I suspect that by the time we are attempting to colonize other planets for industrial purposes we will have the tech for a remote control of that range.
There is a certain type of VR tech that includes shooting data laden lasers onto a user's retina.
This being the delivery system of the image reception by way of the visual field. Add some hi power transmitters and a tiny satelite and a spaceman could operate a clone from the safety of the ship.

However one thing I saw in the trailer gave a very convincing expression of presence in the clone N'avi. And that was when he first feels his body and gets off the table and says "this is great!"

So perhaps there was a direct transfer of memories from one body to the other. Maybe a copy and transfer with wires like connecting a couple of laptops. I am not sure if you would want to put the person to sleep first or not tho, haha. Maybe they just store the human body in some sort of induced coma or something. Or possibly I am avoiding the seeming paradox of the possibility of the newly created human inhabited alien clone becoming an independent thinker and mover so then you would have two copies of Sully's mind occupying two different bodies The whole multiplicity thing that brings up seems pretty hard to accept as possible. But on the other hand in a physics sense I think it could be done. Then the question would get more philosophical. For would the copied memories be enough to animate the alien clone? In other words would the copy bring it's own prime mover with it.
Maybe the memories in the clone would have to be "jump started" in some fashion.

Or...ok just one more, maybe Sully's mind is in his own body the whole time but the viewpoint of the controller of the clone would be in a sort of "Super Mouselook" so it felt like you are actually in the clone perspectivewise.
And the sensory input from the clone would be linked directly to the nervous system of the Human for tight reaction times.

Occasional Speculator

Wow I just watched the trailer for Surrogates from the link Suzeanne posted above.
That looks pretty cool also. There taking the trend of staying at home to do stuff online to the Wall!

Hollywood is a little late to the party on avatar and telepresence concepts. Unlike VR when those concepts were first introduced "The lawnmower Man" appeared fairly quickly afterwards.
Although it was'nt a huge blockbuster. Most people at the time didnt have a clue what VR was.
And there still only handfuls of people that actually had access to the technology.

I figure Hollywood has finally decided that virtual worlds and virtual selves are not going to go away anytime soon.

another movie i will be(fearfully) looking forward to.

Raising the Titanic?