You are the Puppetmaster now dog

Researchers and game developers have been trying to get us into virtual worlds forever, and personally i thought this was already done, but apparently this is an important step. These scientists from the Max Planck Institute have devised a way to translate human motion, captured by video, onto a 3d construct. This means no more having to wear crazy motion tracking equipment and doing measurements of limbs.

Simply put, you can do a 3d laser scan of someone, lets say that short fat guy at the deli, and then you could control his 3d body, even though your sleek tall meatbag is way disproportionate to the guy you are controlling. Pretty cool in the respect of that, if you could boil it down to just facial tracking, you could control your character's face in online games and 3d chat rooms like secondlife or world of warcraft. No more hiding your love of poop jokes behind that gruff axe wielding exterior.