Most people don't smile or make silly faces when they step into the photo booth in the GameStop software store in this town near Dallas. Instead they try to look as menacing as possible.
The booth, made by 3Q Inc of Atlanta, creates a three-dimensional digital image rather than a strip of photographs for your scrapbook. The image, burned on to a CD, can be uploaded to popular video games like Quake III Arena or Counter-Strike and projected on to the head of a virtual character. The booth even allows digital warriors to add a grisly scar or shape the neck and face to look more muscular.
"Some people go for a really, really far-out face," said Casey Hogg, the manager at GameStop, one of three retail stores in the country that is testing the machines for 3Q. A common pose is "gnashing teeth, furrowed brow, flared nostrils," he said.
As the graphics in video games and other virtual environments grow more detailed and realistic, 3Q and other companies are developing ways to help people project their three-dimensional images into cyberspace. Proponents of the technology say that Internet users may soon use realistic 3D representations of themselves, known as avatars, for online activities like trying on clothes in virtual shopping malls or for e-mail in which an image of the sender reads a message aloud to the recipient.
Transporting the computer user into a virtual world has long been a popular science fiction fantasy. Neal Stephenson's best-selling 1992 novel, Snow Crash, depicted a three-dimensional universe in cyberspace that computer users roamed with virtual bodies.
There are no lasers in 3Q's "clone generators," as the company calls its photo booths, and the machines cannot beam people on to the Internet. What the company promises is a greater sense of immersion, with the slogan, "Stop playing computer games -- enter them."
Inside the booth, three digital cameras -- one for each side of the face and one to provide texture -- fire simultaneously to capture the user's likeness, and a multimedia PC calibrates the images to produce a 3D composite. The booth then burns the data onto a CD that the customer can take home and use in selected online games. So far the machines are available only at three software stores -- in Plano, in Seattle and in San Jose, California, but more are expected to appear across the country in the coming months. Users pay US$14.95 to have a clone made.
The company warns users that once the clone enters an online game, other players can download it. "Your image will be copied on to the hard drive of the computers of those you play with and could be misused by them without your knowledge or consent," reads a disclaimer on the CD-ROMs.
The cloning booths have become a standard feature at professional video game tournaments run by the Cyberathlete Professional League, which considers itself the NFL of head-to-head computer gaming. The league sponsors contests around the world in which players insert their faces into the game and compete for cash prizes.
The reigning champion of the league is 20-year-old Johnathan Wendel of Kansas City, Missouri, who has won about US$115,000 playing under the nickname Fatality. "I added a scar under my eye," Wendel said. He said he thought of his online persona as "somewhat of a hero type guy who doesn't get taken down easily."
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