'Virtual human' Milo comes out to play

'Virtual human' Milo comes out to play

www.bbc.co.uk

Microsoft has shown off its "virtual human" that reacts to a person's emotions, body movements and voice.

Milo, as he is known, is designed for use with the firm's hands-free Xbox 360 motion controller called Kinect.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Whilst its probably a wonderful story I cannot help but feel that A: its all about getting you in front of the TV ( maybe for subliminal messaging - call me paranoid) or B: to may you think you are getting exercise in a home environment, but I really love the line as follows

"Films, TV, even hallowed books, are just rubbish because they don't involve me," he said. "It's a sea of blandness."

Really mr Molyneux? without books you wouldn't have learned anything nor would you have had an imagination to create this 'Milo' and without TV you wouldn't have a platform to create this program to be shown on
I agree with you on films though.

But I still think it is an OK thing I for am certainly NOT going to rush out and buy an Xbox. But I am paranoid in thinking its going to be another controlling system to dumb down the populace.


www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 14/7/10 by DataWraith]

The border between Furby and pedophilia is destroyed with the inception of Milo. Imagine of what all the crazies will be asking him to do!!

reply to post by DataWraith


Wow, I have just been to the link in the OP and I am amazed, astonished and scared at the same time. This is really taking virtual reality to a new level. Christ when I was young I had to settle with playing cowboys and indians outdoors.

These kids are going to become not only brainwashed in to thinking its fine to sit in front of a screen but they are going to lose touch of their natural outdoor instinctual fun.

Its a damn shame.

this is old news. came out last year with microsoft revealing project natal.

im pretty sure its not as interactive as it seems. they know the exact things to say do and act to get the desired response from the software. its a marketing ploy like when ps3 released a video of a game called killzone 2 was supposed to be real time rendering turned out it was all post processed. i'll believe it when im interacting with an ai and having philosophical debates about the nature of reality and consciousness.

thats going to be a while away.

reply to post by TiM3LoRd

Project Natal! That's what it was called!

Yeah, I saw this last year too. There is a YT video out there somewhere, showing an early demo. The really clever part was when the interviewer drew on a piece of paper, held it up to the camera and Milo walked up to the screen and virtually took the paper from her and the drawing was on the virtual paper.

I suppose this could all have been previously programmed though.

reply to post by DataWraith


Well hopefully this "Milo" is capable of picking up on the tortured facial expressions of drooling, red eyed kids about to have a mental brake down from not being able to pass a level in a game and tells them to go out side and play....and if "Milo can see a full grown beard on a guy and he plays for more than 12 hours a day "Milo" should shut down until the guy gets laid.

This could be a good thing.

Controller-less games suck. I hate exercise, that's why I play video games.

[edit on 14-7-2010 by againuntodust]

Its pretty cool. I cant wait til the first video game comes out with that technology.

It does raise the risk of lonely people getting more and more isolated as the cocoon with their virtual friend. But for people who really have no friends, what a blessing it could be. (Like those in old folks homes whom no one comes to visit and talk to them)

but his intelligence is based in the cloud...meaning he could see you playing with your willy and call the cops.

WOW, This is the most amazing thing i have ever seen, even better then 3D telly! Makes me wonder what kinda stuff we will have in 20 years!

These kids

Thing is...the video game industry is a huge business NOT because of kids..

Very few games are actually made and marketed for children, the target audience are 30 something with a disposable income, and this group is what has catapulted the gaming industry to the mainstream.

To stereotype gamers as children, or fat slobs living in parents basements does not reflect reality.

Originally posted by nik1halo
Project Natal! That's what it was called!

It's called Kinect now. Natal was just the project name

And Kinect will be nothing more than an Accessoire that will be soon forgotten. It will go down the same way as Atari's Mindlink, Sega's Activator or Nintendo Powerglove as a useless piece of novelty.
Because, what can you do with Kinect? It's basically good for some simple rhythm games, some racing games and that's it. I doubt you can use it for First Person Shooter, Action games or what else.
All games that are announced for it are either music games, racing games or the usual casual crap you can also find on the Wii.

"Milo and Kate" is just a tech-demo to present the system. Aaron Greenberg said that at the E3 this year. Molyneux though denied it and said it will be brought back as a game...but Molyneux has said a lot of things and with the exception of Fable all his games of the past 12 years were just bad.

reply to post by DataWraith


This looks amazing. I'm in two minds about it though, "mind in the cloud", sounds like MS have packaged an AI into a game so paying customers can educate it.
One million people spending an hour interacting with it is equivilent to 500 full time employees spending a year doing it, in quantity. Also, I bet all of the information Milo gathers is kept somewhere, certainly raises some questions.
I'm not anti tech or advancement, but I don't know about advanced AI, I've seen Terminator and the Matrix, have the people creating this stuff?

reply to post by franspeakfree


Bideo games have been commercially around now for over 30 years. It's nothing new anymore and of course, the companies always try to create new things.

You shouldn't be so paranoid and thinking that all kids are just sitting at home and doing nothing but playing games. That's far from the truth.
First of all: Video Games aren't just for or played by kids. The average age of gamers is around 35 years old (a bit higher for PC than on consoles of course)
Lots of people enjoy games. That's why the video game industry made nearly 60 million dollars last year in the middle of the so called financial crisis (it was a new record for them!)

And as for kids: I don't know where you live, but i see a lot of kids out there. They may not play racist games like "cowboy and indians" (that game is wrong on so many levels, i don't even know where to start...indians are the "bad guys" and kids shoot and kill...tse) anymore, but they play a lot of soccer, running around, using bikes or skateboards. Everywhere i go, be it around here or around munich, in the summer the kids are all over the place and doing things that don't have anything to do with video games.

Video games aren't evil, they aren't from Satan, they don't "brainwash" anything but video games can be very useful. You can learn a whole lot of things with the right games. I learned the english language and even some italian. Adventure and puzzle games are way better than old crossword puzzles, they train a lot of abilities and some historical games even teach you a little bit about human history.
Not all video games are violent or "stupid".

reply to post by ShadowAngel85

And Kinect will be nothing more than an Accessoire that will be soon forgotten

I have to disagree. Nintendo has made millions on a device ( Wii) that hasn't been forgotten these last few years, becuase these types of games cater to the casual gaming market. The casual gaming market is where the the big bucks are. I suspect Kinect will be wildly successful. It isn't for the hardcore gamers, they aren't the demographic that Microsoft is after becuase they aren't the demographic that has loads of disposable income.

Bottom line is that Microsoft wanted a piece of Ninetendos Wii pie, and now they will probably get the whole pie!

I'm a hardcore gamer, but even I couldn't help but coo when they showed off Kinectimal.

Originally posted by Merigold
Bottom line is that Microsoft wanted a piece of Ninetendos Wii pie, and now they will probably get the whole pie!

I disagree.
First of all: the best selling games of the past few years are still games for the "hardcore" audience, from GTA 4 to Modern Wafare to for example God of War 3 and of course the sports lineups from EA and 2K every year.

Yeah, the Wii is succesfull and that's the thing: The casual gamer market is basically saturated. The Wii sold 71 Million units (of course Nintendo Fanboys bought the system for Mario and Zelda and some people for the Virtual Console), the DS(i) sold nearly 130 million units and most people also have a PC filled up with the library of games from Pop Cap games. I doubt they need or want another system (expect maybe for the new Nintendo 3DS, which i think will be a huge success)

Plus, to succeed, the Xbox 360 would need a lot of revolutionary casual games and i don't see them. I mean, i even doubt that the Michael Jackson dancing game will be a huge success.
The Xbox 360 so far get even in the US and europe outsold by the PS3 and Sony will release also a motion controlling system for the casual gamer audience (called Playstation Move).

people are going to end up falling in love with a bunch of pixels....which..if you believe in the holographic universe theory..is not really that unusual.

reply to post by ShadowAngel85


Yes, my partner says the same thing when we argue about this subject. I guess time will tell! In anycase, It's good news for the gaming industry, which is where he makes living, and it's goodnews for people who like gaming, so either way I won't complain.

reply to post by Merigold


Not everyone is a furry but if I wanted a game like Kinectimal I could just run off and play Viva Pinata...