Attached Link: http://www.digitalmankind.com

When I saw the Microsoft avatar software for the first time I was astonished about the possibilities - I do not think that Adobe will ever reach ths level. The MS system was throuroughly planned with a handbook of more than 1000 pages and it also consisted of an internal interaction structure with embedded behaviors. The basic problem now is, that there are almost no behaviors for the avatars, they have no personality , no convincing emotions and the timing between speech and gestures is less then convincing. Many problems like the direct generation of gesture are unsolved. The current state of non verbal behavior in online hosts is simply ridiculos. They never will sell anything. Steve is right the technology is there, but it lacks its main component - the simulation of behavior. If this will ever be possible is questionnable. The systems I have seen up to know are not convincing, nor are the approaches taken in this type of research. The problem are the missing direct animation possibilties and the engine which drives it - currently almost everything is handmade and the production costs are just too high. Grammer dMk