Does your av look like you? Show us!

If that's true Susan Vega should have used NetMeeting instead of SL. I go to the local pub for real faces and voices (and good music). And, when LL's analog of whats to come finally becomes a merging technology instead of an emerging technology, maybe I'll go to a pub of a different sort, like the one in Star Wars. Fantasy pays my bills, so I welcome it too.

Have you ever dated someone that lived across the world? My girlfriend was in China for a year, and there was no cooler place to hang out, given the options, than SL. Getting our avis to look similar to our real selves enhanced the experience.

Maybe for you it is.

One of the definitions of Virtual, is something based on reality but not real
One of the definitions of Fantasy, is something not at all based on reality, or to picture yourself as

My avie is me in a virtual sense, I don't change my personality in game and I am happy with my rl face.
My avie is me picturing myself with massive muscles and the ability to fly, that is fantasy aspect.

Some people like who they are in rl, but picture themselves doing things that they otherwise couldn't.

Some people's fantasy's are much more uninhibited, and they picture themselves as a Flaming Chicken

This thread is not titled "show us your freakin flaming chicken avie"

I use the phone, photos, email, netmeeting, skype and text chat to keep in touch with my loved ones across the globe. Sharing SL with friends and family is a lot of fun but the purpose is not keeping in touch with eachother - it's sharing a special experience. SL is sharing your dreams.

Keep in mind that there are several ways to use SL. It can be an extention of RL, for example for the purpose of business. In a RL-like setting I expect Suzanne Vega's av to look like herself, act like herself, and speak and *sing* like herself. But who knows.. she might be roaming SL using an alt, being a purple dragon, refusing to give up any personal data. Both approaches exist side by side, and both make up the complex phenomenon called SL.

I'm glad you are looking at the larger picture, Monalisa. My initial concern with your previous post was that your focus was so much on the anonymous fantasy aspect of SL that you were completely ignoring the deep connection SL has with RL. Don't misunderstand me, anonimity is still very important. That is why Alts are so important.

All the technology that is and will be part of VR really doesn't strip away any of our creativity or anonimity. If anything, it does exactly the opposite. Avatars can be as abstract as we want them to be (ghostly particle effects that change color when we type or speak), or as realistic as we want them to be (a photo projection of our RL head on a shape matched human avatar). The voice technology follows the same rule. I could morph my own voice into either male or female, make it sound like a talking chipmunk, or that of a possesed demon, or simply port my own voice into the virtual space. Mocap, as you keenly pointed out in reference to the 3Dmenow sofware, can be augmented to map to any avatar shape. A good example of all those technologies combined in real time (RL image projection, voice, and mocap) can be seen here:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/videos/ramona_making_of_ver01.ram

That link opens a direct download to a video off Ray Kurzweil's AI site.

It just makes sense that when we enter a 3D virtual world that we experince it through as many inputs and outputs as we do in our 3D RL. I want to speak to people in RL, not pull out a typewriter, type away, then hand them a piece of paper. The same goes for VR. I want to speak, not type. I don't care if the other person sounds like a happy Leprechaun, so long as I can understand them. While it's fun to dress up for Carnival or Halloween, most of the time it's simpler to just be me in RL. VR has RL beat in this aspect (at least for a while). We can visually be anybody or anything we want to be in VR, including our RL selves. Mocap is just another layer of interactivity for VR. I'd rather express my own movements than buy some preprogramed expression or movement that someone else interpreted and created (unless it a dance, because I can't dance my way out of a paper bag).

If there was any form of artificial voice generator I would go for it. Just like choosing a name and an avatar you could choose a voice that fits your character. Set gender, pitch, softness, accent, speed etc. I'd like that, but I have no idea how this can be possible wihout the need to type. You might be able to mask a voice like on TV when they show interviews with some criminals LOL, but it's still YOUR voice, your speed, tone and accent.

That's actually pretty impressive looking. Also I like that hair

This is a great thread, love looking at everyone that has made their avi's look like them. Ok here goes mine. LOL

i think i did an awsome job with replicating myself no? laughs....but in all seriousness i thought the whole point was to be whoever you wish to be. i mean ya we're both hawt but...don't tell kinga this, rl me is way cuter

When I came to SL I never even thought to create someone other than me. In SL I'm just as chunky as I am offline.... and I tried realllly hard to make my avi look like me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it was a fun challenge to make it work.

So here's a 4 pics of me and 4 different pics of my avi.

What do ya think? Is it even close?

-ally

i thought was good idea, to sort of make myself like me in RL. It makes me feel like am actually me, and no act. .

Great job, Ally -- if I knew you in RL, I'd recognize you in SL! (A hottie in either world.)

Thanks!!!!! I do believe you just made my day!!!

-ally

Nice set of pic's, ally. You have some good elements (the hair, choker necklace, and makeup looks) to tie all the images together. My personal likeness choice is 2nd from the bottom. Put the choker in that RL look with lighter eye shadow in the SL look, and you could get an even closer match.

Wow, incredible job Ally! Left me speechless.

i think it is up to the sl person as to how they want to portay themself. i look like much the same as i did a few years ago, only a little more youthful-- a bit more well -endowed ( actually a lot more lol) but much the same.

the interesting thing is i feel younger and i feel more alive in sl. sl allows us to live out those fantasies and to have some things that maybe rl coulldnt give us.

i think you should have fun with it. be all that you can be in second lifeeeee

I had to chuckle. I just spent today working on my av to make it look like me. I don't know why but I felt the urge to. As a shape shifter in game I am rarely in anything that looks like me, but it was almost refreshing to just sit and *try to build without crashing, lol* in my natural form. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but when i do I'll try to remember to post them here.

Oh and Ally, Very nicely done!

At least I do not think so!

Check the photos on my myspace to see http://www.myspace.com/heartshinegirl

Cool article (w/pics) :
http://sunka-salama.blogspot.com/2007/12/reality-vs-virtual-reality.html

This is a really fun thread, but some of the images are showing as garbled like this for me. And some are displaying just fine. Does anyone have any idea why?

They are doing the same thing for me Syliva. I thought it was just me because some other people are seeing them just fine. I wonder if we have something checked wrong in our profile. Ideas anyone?

I suspect it's a database corruption issue related to Linden Lab's servers because the images that aren't scrambled are hosted off of LL's servers. The ones that are scrambled are all on LL's servers (with the exception of one image, which seems to have escaped corruption on LL's servers).

Actually there is such a product.. Its called MorphVOX, and it does a pretty nice job of changing your voice to almost anything you can imagine.. Works well with the SL voice capability.. They have a freeby demo you can download at www.screamingbee.com. Back when I was still using Windows I gave it a try and was pretty impressed.. Unfortuantly, since I switched to Linux, there's nothing equivalent available for Linux...

Tas