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Headcasting
Matrox has always been about radical innovation, despite its few successes in the retail market. Today, following the announcement of Matrox's new graphics chipset, the G550, Matrox once again courts the finicky wiles of consumers and businesses by introducing an interesting new feature called Headcasting.
Digimask technology is used to create facial textures for a 3D model from everyday photographs.
Headcasting is a new technology designed to supplement videoconferencing over IP technologies by easing bandwidth requirements. Instead of using video compression like most videoconferencing setups do, Headcasting uses the idle 3D acceleration power lying within the graphics card, using it to create an animated avatar on the screen. The "rendered head" uses vertex skinning, a technology introduced by ATI's Radeon accelerators, to convey realistic facial motions and expressions. Coupling this with an adaptive voice-recognition technology, the computer can determine mouth positioning for various phonetic sounds, and accurately depict that on the modeled face. Finally, using two photographed images of a persons face (Frontal and side-view), the computer makes a set of textures and maps it onto the face, creating a 3D-rendered head resembling your own that moves as you speak.
LIPSinc technology powers the audio syncing behind Headcasting.
The end result is a virtual face that mimics your own movements and impressions as if you were using a videoconferencing kit. There are, of course, some expressions which voice alone cannot depict (Raising an eyebrow, blinking, glare), but the software can be modeled to interpret potential expressions based on rising and falling voice levels, as well as inflection. Matrox, being a business-oriented company, is primarily pitching this to businesses as an alternative to videoconferencing, although it has viability in the home market for home users who want to talk to their friends but can't do videoconferencing over dialup. By removing the video data from the transmission and sending only audio, keeping a live transmission up over 56K is made much more feasible, with fewer pops and lags than would normally be had when using videoconferencing.
Virtual Presenter provides an automated method for an avatar to deliver a presentation while being controlled and narrated remotely.
Matrox also pitches Headcasting as being a way to convey information without a physical presence. The scenario is this: Imagine if you were giving a presentation at work, but couldn't be there to present it due to being overseas. You get connected to the Internet, and then connect to a remote computer set up in the conference room, where your avatar gives your presentation for you as you conduct the meeting in PowerPoint.
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