Giant anchorable holograms: An alternative fix for space barbies after CQ retirement

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Here’s the idea, a trimmed down system that doesn’t require the maintenance of a full fledged station environment, only the character. These 3D character holograms are static or animated poses with set colors and lighting that display in space from a billboard platform. These platforms can be anchored by players on stations or elsewhere.

Static Hologram

In effort to save memory, object appears as default male or female character pose until interacted upon. Once done so, character, full clothing set, and any animated/static pose are rendered into space. Furthermore a user’s graphics setting and cluster node stress would determine if holograms (even in default featureless state) remain visible in space. If a player is on your (ad)block list you will not be able to see their character hologram in space or in station.

Licenses for animations packs would be available in-game or the New Eden Store for plex.

Users can hold multiple animation/pose licenses yet designate an active one that’ll appear when they anchor a platform. This (single) active user license will also be used if the character hologram is displayed elsewhere in the New Eden cluster such as inside an NPC station for things like bounty leaderboards.

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Captains Quarters are being retired, yet Space Gods still gotta show off those shoes somehow. Why not try it with giant holograms so we can have walking ‘on’ stations?

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Giant static/animated character holograms would not be out of place inside stations.

Full body avatar displays utilized for the promotion of station owners, pirates, top bounty hunters, etc, etc. either in a static or animated pose. Lots of potential here. The animation licenses that players buy from NES or acquire in-game would update how their full body avatar is displayed to all capsuleers throughout the cluster at these billboard nodes in station or anchored by players themselves.

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And of course I have the means to block what I don’t want to see … Oh wait, no, I can’t because CCP is not competent enough to program this, and thus I would now not only have to watch Xenuria’s face on the billboards, I would probably also have to watch her full body lingering around in my hangar.

But I can turn away my camera, which is nice.

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That’s what you get with Net Neutrality. All Xenuria packets must be treated equally. If New Eden billboard business were allowed to compete free of CONCORD dinosaur state regulation, customers would be able to opt into a competently operated media fast lane that bypasses all instances of Xenuria.

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Net Neutrality is a good point; however, I come from the Ad Blocker camp. CCP and players can pay for whatever they want, but if I don’t want to see this on my screens or do not want to stream things I disagree with in my citadels, that’s something different than net neutrality. My citadels in particular are the analogue to a TV station, and TV stations can decide what ads they show.

Also, as said multiple times in the old forums: I am not opposed to the billboards or even your suggestion. I actually want to see this in space because some ads are really amazing and nice to watch. However, I also want to have proper content management so that I do not have to see old, outdated things, things of entities that don’t exist anymore, things that I detest, and so on. Billboards or these holograms can be something really amazing to watch … but not if the content is as horrible as CCP’s balancing and coding skills.

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You know what? If CCP could competently implement something like this, I’d be game for it.

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You would have to have some limits in regards to trade hub station systems; can you imagine the mess around Jita? Not that I’m against the idea itself, but I’ve learned that EVE players excel in breaking/abusing game mechanics and features.

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You’re good!

Animation, though, is AFAIK complicated. It seems that, for some reason, they can’t just cheat through it by using motion capturing. That’s something pretty much anyone who can program can actually do, even at home, just using proper clothes, coloured postits, a scissor and a webcam.

AFAICT 90% of all characters we ever get to see are either walking or in some default modes. Exceptions, which I’m not aware of, might exist of course. There is at least one video of a character having ragdoll mechanics applied to it, though, which makes me wonder why this can’t be applied to all the others.

Errr, TL;DR: Animating the characters is hard.

Would you mind if I asked you questions to help you potentially improve your idea? I want to analyze it and improve or adapt it, to increase the likelihood of getting them to do at least something.

Sorry if I speak in a weird tongue. :grin:

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Most certainly. Even outsourcing to a dedicated studio or to the players is going to have many challenges. Starting with static poses (beyond the standard six we currently have) might be a way in the door.

they can’t and won’t outsource it. animation is hard, because they didn’t make it in a smart way. :grin:

i expected more of a response, but vOv. Good luck!

Ask your questions.

Also, CCP has outsourced technical animation work before.

https://vimeo.com/77827785

Who is excited for some cyberpunk industrial light and magic?

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btw, i havent forgotten or deliberately ignore his.

i’m still thinking about it. good thinking can take time. :slight_smile: i feel like it’s important to say this, as you could think i don’t stick to my word. plus, in midst of my first written reply, i actually realized who you are, which made me scrap it all. :smiley:

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You’ve piqued my curiosity. Did you make the connection from Discord, Slack, or Twitter?

Memory of a youtube video popped into my head. Then my brain connected the dots.

Pleasure Hub, Avatars, the images you provided, advertisements; this all came together and i went “ooohhh :point_right::ok_hand: me, it’s that person!”

Delicate. You want sexy ads and that makes perfect sense. You want to use the momentum provided by CCP with the removal: that’s smart and opportunistic. The idea, though, falls apart for a few sadly good reasons and my brain hasn’t come up with solutions yet.

  • You want sexy. CCP hates sexy, because religious people from the US are a part of the playerbase and avatars can’t even have nipples. I’ve even heard a rumor that avatars in the character creator are mirrored horizontally, on purpose, because the brain subconsciously notices something being off, which distracts from the sexual attractiveness. I’ve checked that and agree, though to be fair, deliberately looking for it skews the result.

  • You want ads. Despite what some people in here might say, in general peope HATE ads. With a passion. They block them on websites, spool their VCRs forward (what year is it again?) or even pay for services where they don’t need to see them. So, your idea (no matter if with avatars or just holografic displays) will lead to some people spamming their ■■■■ everywhere, worse than citadels, and most people hating them… If you meant to restrict it around citadels, instead of everywhere in space (as awesome and hilarious it might seem :grin:) then that’s probably better, but how many corporations sitting in that citadel should be allowed to have an ad outside? What’s the threshold until people say it’s enough and how taxing would it be on the gfx card?

  • The character creator is an inhouse project. Thwy likely can’t just outsource the work, like it’s UE. From what we know, they are extremely limited. There is one one-second-clip where a character appears to have ragdoll mechanics apllied to it, which would give it some freedom (as squishy, spineless doll made out of goo). Assuming they can apply ragdoll to any character, things might get easier.

  • Doing animations is effort. The less effort CCP has, the more likely they will look at your idea. Therefore it’s counterproductive to ask them to create animations, because the people doing so could as well create skins, which sell. There’s risk involved for them, wasting resources on something that doesn’t make money. Giving their track record, it makes sense to assume they’ll try to minimize their losses in that regard. :grin:

So… what’s left? Tricky!

It appears to me, that the safest bet would be asking them to put it all into the crowd. (Not cloud. :P) outsource everything to the players who want to create, which can be transformed into free marketting. As the status quo implies that CCP doesn’t care about who is being attracted to the game as long as they bring money, it wouldn’t be much of an issue to have people in the game who don’t care about spaceships at all and just rather talk in local while using a seperate program or online service, sanctioned by CCP and only usable when Omega, where people can do all their kinky and normal stuff alike.

It baffled me a bit to see that no player has actually made anything at all. Maybe it’s expectations, idk, but it’s trivial to provide a basic plattform for people to run around with avatars or whatever. Restrictions can help, too, like for example it being top-down view only. Or ASCII only. This depends on why people want this. Those who need shiny graphics, because they’ve lost their imagination, won’t be happy with anything anyway. Those who really want it for the social connection and don’t mind if their character doesn’t visibly dance, those are a good backbone to have for moving forqard with such an idea.

In regards to the ads, i’d say, that this would be a long way to go. For them specifically I can only suggest losing the avatar aspect, but i know that it’s not just about ads. It’s about the whole experience.

Imho the smartest way moving forward would be to get CCP to realize that the people themselves would be totally willing to remove all the efforts they’d have, if only they opened up necessary information for people to have their own avatars. They might not look like how CCP’s engine renders them (though in CQ they lack anyway), but it would still be more than nothing at all.

I don’t know enough about you to tell how you operate, so i just threw everything at you and hope you can work with it. I also don’t know if you actually have a fanbase or not, though i see you as someone who could (and imo should) have one. I`m sorry for not being of any more help.

And always be ware of those who rather have nothing, than getting what they want to the exact detail. They’re a cancer and hinder progress.

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At the very least CCP approves of symmetrical butts and blood bukkake.

Clarification: People hate shitty, poorly done, repetitious ads. There is great content out there, however it is eclipsed by the deluge of noise. In regards to Eve’s ads, people would likely be more receptive to content if they had more control over what was served to them, e.g. ability to rank and/or block player adverts. At the very least, adverts are a boon to player created content–the service is underdeveloped and requires more advanced tools for self/community curation.

Better yet, attach these holograms to pre-nerf mobile warp disruption bubbles. Turn the spam up and let your graphics card burn!

Yeah, spam is a valid concern in terms of performance. Maybe considering the price of the deployable units, structure health, potential reinforcement states, displayed on killmail, hard grid limits, instant solar system warp-to-object functions, etc. may be factors of consideration for reducing spam (or ability to clean up spam).

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Ah, that video.

To be fair, I have made progress on that front.

While a direct Pleasure Hub Advert was rejected on the grounds of including non-English characters…
https://gfycat.com/PhysicalLinearAlbacoretuna

This advert for an in-game sex toy company, which uses a ‘subtle’ reference to masturbation, was accepted. This was done with full disclosure to CCP about what it was mind you. The email described everything.

https://gfycat.com/GrandiosePoliteAmmonite

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I am so :point_right::ok_hand:ing impressed! :smiley:

Well, that means i partly think with outdated information. Thanks for correcting that! Now i wonder what’d be actually doable and how far you can get. This thread is way too empty…

Static Hologram

In effort to save memory, object appears as default male or female character pose until interacted upon. Once done so, character and full clothing set are rendered into space.

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What would the avatar do, once i’ve clicked it?