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Sony Patents: Machine Learning System to Show Spectators Button Inputs - Interactive Avatar System

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

The company's latest patent describes an artificial intelligence system that would take game footage and enhance it with auto-generated input captions, even without access to the actual controller metadata from the recorded sessions. As such, the technology would hinge on robustly trained machine learning models which would have to be taught gameplay mechanics on a per-game basis. Since that would ostensibly require a substantial commitment for each new title, it's likely that Sony would initially limit this solution to its own exclusives whose budgets can support investments like teams of AI scientists and trailers starring LeBron James and John Travolta.

CONTROLLER-ACTION-RECOGNITION-FROM-VIDEO-FRAMES-USING-MACHINE-LEARNING.jpg


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According to the latest patent listing provided by Sony, the company is attempting to develop a video game avatar that would allow for animated modification on the fly using information sourced from the user's own facial expressions. The provided documentation suggests that users' faces would be scanned for various expressions (happiness, sadness, etc.), which would then be converted to their in-game avatar's own face. This new submission may or may not be connected to Sony's earlier AI-based facial animation patent, it's worth pointing out.

Furthermore, the listing mentions that users would also have the option to convert their own faces into 3D models to be used in video games. This could be where Sony's picture-in-picture patent would potentially tie into the system, as it would allow for expressive pop-in screens that could appear in response to various in-game actions, such as victories and defeats. Other use cases include speech bubbles, animated gestures, gesticulations, and similar instances.

New-Bitmap-image-(1).jpg
 
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
I had to read the article to better understand what Sony is trying to do. And it is promising. If you like speedruns that technology would be amazing to better see how the speedrunners do their tricks for example.

In the article Sony put many patents and this one is just one of them: interactive avatar( like the miis but better i suppose), gaze tracking for standard games( no idea how that would work) and their own spin on dynamic refresh rate synchronization( like nvidia g-sync).

This is made by a few people who have the talentand drive to create something new and yes it can be crap. But that is what gave us dualsense so i hope they continue.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
Do you think every employee at Sony is there only to make games?
Building new technologies and innovations is still a thing for big game companies.
Sure some of the ideas their engineers come up with may never see the light of day, and might not even be particularly useful for the average gamer, but letting the engineers explore keeps them motivated to keep inventing.

This tech alone would be excellent to people who like watching speedruns or watching DMC combo videos.....hell have this at EVO so i can see how these magicians manage to pull off these insane attack strings.

Think about basically every QoL feature systems have, those features were created with money "wasted" that could have gone to making actual games.
Activity Cards might have seemed like a waste of resources, but today its one of the PS5s best features.
Streaming directly from console, again a useless feature thats taking money away from actual game development but a godsend.
Frikken Achivements/Trophies....utter pointless in the grand scheme....but tell gamers Sony is taking the feature away, and youll have alot of unhappy gamers.

QoL and Feature sets matter, every cent isnt only about making videogames.
Think before you post.
 

Cyborg

Member
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
Come at you? Is that your defense? If companies didn't invest in the development of new stuff there wouldn't be any innovation/products you enjoy. The output of Sony's first party has been amazing, they invest a lot of money in that. You hiding behind ''fanboys/girls will come after me'' is so silly. Are you 10?
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
I can see the use, but not sure why they would go this route rather than just creating a simple system-level feature to overlay graphics of the actual buttons being pressed in real time. Seems like a much simpler solution.
 
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
Technically is not just one field.Of course the company try to research and develop lots of different ideas.And Sony is putting more money then ever into games development.It’s not like they stopped games and started research different things only.This patent could later in ps7-8 times turn into cool things with advanced tech a new home like social platform with a self developing avatars with own feelings mimics and stuff.You should be open minded especially in regards to technology
 
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adamosmaki

Member
Come at you? Is that your defense? If companies didn't invest in the development of new stuff there wouldn't be any innovation/products you enjoy. The output of Sony's first party has been amazing, they invest a lot of money in that. You hiding behind ''fanboys/girls will come after me'' is so silly. Are you 10?
No one is hiding. I'm criticizing sony investing money into something that in all likelihood will end up being a gimmick like MS kinect was . Or aren't we allowed to criticize a mega corporation nowdays
 

ksdixon

Member
I do hate both quick time events and contextual fill-up bars. When given the option I turn those to hold vs bash or qte auto hit. I'd just rather they be cutscenes or an in-game canned animations.
 

Dynasty8

Member
Sometimes I feel like Sony is shooting themselves in the foot with stuff like this. Their time and resources are better spent on other things rather than these weird patents to attempt to "enhance" games.... They probably went so deep into research and analytics for Ragnarok where it actually harmed the game than helped. NPCs shouting the answers to puzzles immediately and basically solving it for you entirely makes me think that decision was based on over extensive studies/case studies/research done on Sony's side.
 

midnightAI

Member
No one is hiding. I'm criticizing sony investing money into something that in all likelihood will end up being a gimmick like MS kinect was . Or aren't we allowed to criticize a mega corporation nowdays
The chances are (and this goes for many patents), a random employee came up with the idea while doing other dev work. They mentioned that idea to higher ups who thought it was a good idea and decided to patent it, it may get used, it may not. This happens all the time for software and hardware development and many times it takes almost zero time and money away from other development, especially as much of patent work goes to the legal department (Sony will have their own Intellectual Property department). Of course it can be thought up by Sony/PlayStation R&D which is their job so doesnt take away any resources for the dev teams either.

Sony will be creating hundreds of patents per year, most don't come to anything but its a way of (partially at least) protecting those ideas.
 
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intbal

Member
I swear I read that last line like:

"...Sony would initially limit this solution to its own exclusives whose budgets can support teams of AI scientists like LeBron James and John Travolta."
 

Neilg

Member
reporting on patents like they are news is kind of a waste of energy. It's only interesting when someone figures out how to turn it into a viable experience.

90% of the time they have no plans to put any effort into doing this themselves, the patent only exists so if microsoft or someone else does it they can force them to license it and make money. Better to think of the team coming up with patents as not thinking 'what do we want our company to do' but 'what long shot idea might one of our competitors do that we can intercept'
 

badblue

Gold Member
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
Sony and other big companies budget money for their different projects. The R&D money is not being taken from the game dev budget.
 
Why aren't they working on A.I. for FCUKING VIDEO GAMES. Game A.I. has been dogshit since Far Cry 2. Naughty Dog is literally the only company I know of that even attempts to push that tech.
 

John Wick

Member
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc
Sony learn from this genius. Sack Cerny as he's a waste of money.
 
Do you think every employee at Sony is there only to make games?
Building new technologies and innovations is still a thing for big game companies.
Sure some of the ideas their engineers come up with may never see the light of day, and might not even be particularly useful for the average gamer, but letting the engineers explore keeps them motivated to keep inventing.

This tech alone would be excellent to people who like watching speedruns or watching DMC combo videos.....hell have this at EVO so i can see how these magicians manage to pull off these insane attack strings.

Think about basically every QoL feature systems have, those features were created with money "wasted" that could have gone to making actual games.
Activity Cards might have seemed like a waste of resources, but today its one of the PS5s best features.
Streaming directly from console, again a useless feature thats taking money away from actual game development but a godsend.
Frikken Achivements/Trophies....utter pointless in the grand scheme....but tell gamers Sony is taking the feature away, and youll have alot of unhappy gamers.

QoL and Feature sets matter, every cent isnt only about making videogames.
Think before you post.
You play fighting games?
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
You play fighting games?
Only Soul Calibur competitively. (There are dozens of us!!)
DOA until they took out Tag.
SF and Tekken basically to get peoples Win/Loss ratios up.
FighterZ because Im a frikken nerd.
Guilty Gear because I like the character designs and its the only game with Ramlethal.
 
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Only Soul Calibur competitively. (There are dozens of us!!)
DOA until they took out Tag.
SF and Tekken basically to get peoples Win/Loss ratios up.
FighterZ because Im a frikken nerd.
Guilty Gear because I like the character designs and its the only game with Ramlethal.
I couldn’t play fighting games at all until I got good at smash and then something clicked. I played mvci amd enjoyed it despite the flaws, I of course play fighters, I mentioned smash, I got guilty gear late so I was behind on the meta and dropped the game, I’m currently playing kof and have also tried multiversus. For reference I played smash Wii U competetively online not ultímate and was lowkey one of the best fox, Mario, and greninja players on the planet. I’ve played nitro and a couple other top dbfz players online as well
 

Kdad

Member

The company's latest patent describes an artificial intelligence system that would take game footage and enhance it with auto-generated input captions, even without access to the actual controller metadata from the recorded sessions. As such, the technology would hinge on robustly trained machine learning models which would have to be taught gameplay mechanics on a per-game basis. Since that would ostensibly require a substantial commitment for each new title, it's likely that Sony would initially limit this solution to its own exclusives whose budgets can support investments like teams of AI scientists and trailers starring LeBron James and John Travolta.

CONTROLLER-ACTION-RECOGNITION-FROM-VIDEO-FRAMES-USING-MACHINE-LEARNING.jpg


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


According to the latest patent listing provided by Sony, the company is attempting to develop a video game avatar that would allow for animated modification on the fly using information sourced from the user's own facial expressions. The provided documentation suggests that users' faces would be scanned for various expressions (happiness, sadness, etc.), which would then be converted to their in-game avatar's own face. This new submission may or may not be connected to Sony's earlier AI-based facial animation patent, it's worth pointing out.

Furthermore, the listing mentions that users would also have the option to convert their own faces into 3D models to be used in video games. This could be where Sony's picture-in-picture patent would potentially tie into the system, as it would allow for expressive pop-in screens that could appear in response to various in-game actions, such as victories and defeats. Other use cases include speech bubbles, animated gestures, gesticulations, and similar instances.

New-Bitmap-image-(1).jpg
All supported by their iSite purchase...
 

CamHostage

Member
90% of the time they have no plans to put any effort into doing this themselves, the patent only exists so if microsoft or someone else does it they can force them to license it and make money.

Or more apt in the modern market, the patent only exist so if they come up with something anywhere in the vicinity of the idea (and patents are so vague that you never need to make a working model of an idea in order to patent it,) they can point to the patent when patent trolls come after them for general usage concepts.

Securing an idea strongly enough to force licensing is a fairly daunting ask in tech, but in legal courts, it's a revolving door of business. Big companies are securing anything which vaguely resembles something they might need some day in order to ween down on their time in court. They spend less time going after each other than one would assume (and even when they do, like the Apple vs Samsung lawsuit, they seem to have a harder time proving their "inventions" when they have a history of working product than these trolls who just come into Texas courtrooms with drawings on a napkin sealed in a postmarked envelop.)
 
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Raonak

Banned
Yeah instead of pouring money into actual game development let's put our money into nonsensical crap. And before Sony fanboys and fangirls come at me this go for every company that waste money into BS including MS,nvidia,amd,nintendo etc etc

See kids, this is what happens when you skip school.

R&D system engineering is a completely different department than game developers.
 
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StueyDuck

Member
wow, of all the reasons to buy that ML studio, this crap wasn't on my list :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Classic Sony
 
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