Kotaku: kotaku labu

You Can Still Use That Xbox 360 HD DVD Player (For Other Things)

Brian Ashcraft — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:10 MST

Don't trash those Xbox 360 HD DVD players just yet! You can use them for other things. Site TeamXbox has a lighthearted look at ways to get the most out of your obsolete peripheral. They include: paper weight, cup holder, chair leg balancer, door stop, mouse pad, Xbox 360 Power Supply platform, straight edge ruler and book end. This list makes us feel way better and happy that all Microsoft's effort was not in vain. Click through the gallery below to see the HD DVD player in action.

Ways to Extend Xbox 360 HD DVD Player's Life [TeamXbox via Hatimaki]

How To Find Your Way In Akihabara

Brian Ashcraft — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:00:09 MST

Akihabara is good fun. But let's face it, visiting can be stressful if you don't know the lingo. To help, here's an English map of all the major sites and stores in Akiba. The map makes note of things like "Consumer Games", "PC Games", "Arcades" and "Doujin." While it won't help you deal with store clerks, it will at least get your foot in the door. If you are ever thinking about visiting, bookmark this page. Who knows, it may help.
Printable Akiba Map [Akihabara Channel via Anime News Network]

DS Lite or PSP - Which Does Japan Want?

Brian Ashcraft — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:16 MST

　The holidays are coming up fast, and people need to think about presents! So, people of Japan, which portable game machine do you want: PSP or DS Lite? A year ago, it was really hard to get the DS Lite in Japan. So hard that DS Lites had to be re-imported from America to meet the demand. But now, things have cooled off considerably. The PSP has experienced an upsurge of late thanks to a much overdue redesign. So which one do most Japanese folks want? Cross Marketing poled 300 people to find out. Know: 20 percent were in their teens, 20 percent in their twenties, 20 percent in their thirties, 20 percent in their forties and 20 percent in their fifties. The results:

Nintendo DS 6.7%
Nintendo DS Lite 23.3%
PSP 22.3%
Other 1.7%
Don't want any 46.0%

Adding the regular DS and the Lite gives Nintendo a more sizable lead over Sony. Still nothing like the craziness of last year! Though, impressive showing for the PSP. There is one rational explanation for this dip in demand, you know: Everyone already has a DS.
PSP Challenging [What Japan Thinks] [Image]

HowTo: Create Celebrity Faces in R6 Vegas

Brian Crecente — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:00:05 MST

I just realized that in the excitement of posting about sticking Sopranoes characters into Rainbow Six: Vegas I forgot to walk you fully through the process of creating your own celebrity in-game faces for the shooter.

This all comes via Will, who actually took the time to put my wild ruminations into practice, and DigiMask the people behind the technology.

The first, and often hardest step, it seems is finding two really good shots of the celebrity you want to face map. They need to be clean, clear, up close pictures showing a head-on and side pose.

Here are some tips for what to look for in a photo:

The image should have a neutral expression, eyes open, mouth closed. No smiling if possible.
Make sure you can see both ears in the face-on image.
Make sure the hair isn't covering the ears or forehead.
No glasses.
You should only be able to see one eye in the side-on shot, not even part of the other, and the whole ear.
Make sure the profile faces to the left.
Even lighting with no shadows or bright highlights is important.

Once you find your celeb pics, photoshop them if necessary to get the brightness and contrast right.

Will pointed his Vision Camera at his computer screen to do the capture, which probably explains Gandolfini's angelic glow. I'll try to do some off of prints later this week.

Good luck and happy photo hunting. Make sure to send in any particularly good faces. Too bad Vegas doesn't let you save multiple custom faces.

Kotaku Labu: Create Celebrity Faces in R6 Vegas

Brian Crecente — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:01:31 MST

I've been playing a lot of Rainbow Six: Vegas lately. Mostly because it just plain-out kicks ass. But what initially drew me to the game was the cool little face-mapping feature it has built into it.

If you want, you can use the Xbox 360's Vision Camera to map your real face onto a character in 3D for all to see during multiplayer matches.

After doing two or three face grabs and coming up with a frighteningly realistic Brian, I started thinking about the process. All it does is take a head on shot of you and a profile and them use some magic and math to turn it into a very realistic 3D face.

Couldn't you just get sharp pictures of people, one head on, one profile, and use that to create faces.

Fortunately, when I was babbling about this I happened to be in the middle of a series of matches and one of the gamers, a reader named Will, decided to test out my theory.

The result was amazing. He took two pictures of James Gandolfini (Sopranos) and turned it into a fairly realistic 3D face map. Oh, the possibilities. First up? Paris Hilton, that is if I can find any pictures that aren't of her turned slightly to the side.