geekosystem

On Tuesday, EverQuest II launched a new feature for its players, SOEmote, that lets a player's in-game character mirror their facial expressions. It also lets players customize their voices with a filter called Voice Font. All this was meant to make the game more immersive, but even if it doesn't, it sure sounds like plenty of fun to mess around with. I know you're snacking again, Steve. Your mouth is moving but you're not talking.

Software developed by a group from Keio University lets you control your avatar in real time! Using little more than a standard PC and a PlayStation Eye, it actually does a pretty good job once you get over the lol-guy-doing-stuff-with-Miku thing.

Kinect was an ambitious project from the start, so it's good to see that Microsoft is following through by continuing to support the device and doling out more functionality. One of the big steps was the release of Kinect for Windows, which allowed a whole new crowd of would-be developers take a crack at the hardware, and now they'll have a new thing to take a crack at. After an SDK update, Kinect now has facial-tracking capabilities, so it'll be able to tell if you're enjoying playing with it.