Well kickstarter refund on undelivered promises, so they’d only be defrauding themselves.
I’ve done work in VR and Motion Capture, and this would have been relatively easy 10 years ago, let alone today. The bold-claim is the price-point, not the technology. Even Pokemon on the 3DS can pick up basic facial expressions; we’re not talking about hoverboards here people.
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they’ll deliver a product, just not the one advertised.
In which case they wouldn’t be delivering on their promises 
Checked with my semi-domesticated game developer, and he raised a few flags:
He calls the “neurowear” mention at the end of their pitch “pretty much nonsense. Lots of people have tried to create such things, none has made one that does anything terribly useful. I suspect they don’t really understand the tracking technologies, they are just using what is available and thus can’t separate real from fantasy in other people’s tracking products.”
He points out a mention of using characters/avatars from games. If they’re talking about pulling existing graphics out of games, that’s violation of license/copyright. Even reverse engineering the characters may violate DMCA.
On the other hand, he cites systems like Visage which are “quite real” and already on the market. The difference here does simply seem to be that (a) they’re promising to do it cheap and (b) it isn’t clear they actually know what they’re doing.
except that this is on indiegogo not kickstarter and having witnessed affinity fraud on both sites as they happen all the time.
like this affinity scammer.
Ah, think I got led off course by someone else mentioning kickstarter! I don’t know anything about the alternatives, so couldn’t say.
To be fair though what you linked is slightly different (and something I happen to have debated on this very site), but in that case we’re talking about subtle misleadingly, at best. The kickstarter was for what it was for, and as far as I’m aware she went to the camp? Which is what was being kickstarted.
If someone says they’re gonna build a cheap webcam mocap app, and deliver something different, then they’ve broken the terms of their fundraising (which legally actually acts more like investment).
How can Kickstarter (or Indiegogo) refund the money after it’s been given to the person who started the project? They can only refund backers if the project doesn’t meet it’s goal or is found out to be an obvious scam before the payout. Look at Hanfree, for example (as just one example):
Just looked into it further and you’re right, I was mistaken about their policy. It is, however, still an investor relationship, so as demonstrated by the law suit you are legally entitled to their promises. But admittedly not as convenient as a built-in refund system!
Yeah, they’re not selling it that way, other commenters just seemed to be questioning the plausibility of the technology, which just seems like a more polished version of what has been in use in games for a while.
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That Susan Wilson kickstarter fraud was so egregious that it’s put me off supporting anything through crowdfunding without serious investigation.
thanks for the tech specs, i thought i read all the FAQ, must have missed that.
When i visited the site it was only half baked and hobbled together, nearly half the links landed you on the exact same page, and none of the information I’d look for was in an obvious place…but perhaps they’ll do a better job on the software.
Everquest 2 has had this feature for a couple of years, but nobody plays EQ2, so nobody noticed.
There is a live HTML demo provided by Visage Technologies, and the materials say that the product is basically built on top of a newer version of what the demo is showing.
[WARNING] The Javascript and data download is 17.2 MB. It will take SEVERAL (10-20+) minutes. I recommend opening the developer console to “Network” if you have Chrome before opening the page, so that you can watch it download.
http://www.visagetechnologies.com/HTML5/Samples/FaceTracker/sampleTracker.html
Here it is working on me:
All of the colored lines move with me (there are 12 sets), except the nose and ‘top of head’ - those barely deform. The orange eye wireframes turn red when I close my eyes, and the green lines point where I’m looking. (I proved this to myself with a screenshot.)
The lips seem awkward when I open my mouth. The eyebrows sometimes snap to my glasses.
Yeah, that sounds like what the plan is to me.
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