Folks over at MP1st have spotted a virtual reality patent filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment that discusses facial feature tracking via head mounted display (HMD) to deliver a more realistic experience.
A description provided by the company talks about capturing images of the user’s mouth and nose, and detecting their eye gaze. The technology would allow other users to see an avatar of the player that mimics their facial expressions and movements. The patent also mentions users being able to see a part of their own nose in VR like they do in reality.
By providing the user’s nose or partial views of the user’s nose in the scenes, it is possible for the user to feel a more realistic experience when viewing the virtual-reality content. If the user’s nose is not provided, at least partially in the images, the user’s appearance or perception of the virtual-reality scenes will be less than natural. As such, by providing this integration into the images, in locations where the user is expecting to see at least part of the user’s nose, the views into the virtual-reality content will be more natural, and as expected by the user’s natural brain reactions to filter out the nose. Embodiments described herein present methods for identifying the nose, characterizing the nose physical characteristics, and then generating models of the nose for presentation at least partially in the scenes.
Patents don’t always come to fruition but they’re interesting to peruse, nonetheless.
What do our readers think of this one?
