We will be creating the first ever #FaceArcade. An arcade for faces.

The Blurb:
Use your face to control a cacophony of fast paced and addictive mini-games, races and mad tasks; compete with your Hangout friends and emerge as the Face Arcade WINNER!

Shaved by the bell, Techno Yawn, Hypno Cat and Nodding Nelly.
We have the titles, now we just need to figure out how we are going to make them.

This experiment will combine the powers of our man fleshes in Wellington, New Zealand and Amsterdam, Netherlands against the might of the internet to create
an entire arcade series of 5 games (WTF?!!) using the new hangouts API over the next 2 weeks.
5 games. 2 weeks. 0 problems?

We want to hear your abuse. You can follow along on which ever sticky flow you prefer.

• labs blog
• google+
• facebook
• twitter

Instructions

Click above to launch demo, you will need Flash Player 11.

WARNING: This demo makes heavy use of GPU acceleration that some machines may have difficulty running, particularly on the Mac OS at the moment.

Move the mouse to rotate the camera (keep the cursor in the middle to stop spinning). Click to focus and use the arrow keys or AWSD to move or click and hold to move forward.

Detail

The entire scene is rendered multiple times onto texture maps which are then sampled with a wave distortion effect to simulate the reflective and refractive properties of water.

Colour abberation and meniscus of the water surface is achieved by offsetting the RGB sample co-ordinates, the latter also uses an alpha fade to provide a seamless blend where the water meets the camera lens.

Caustics and underwater fogging are mapped onto the terrain depending on the height of
the surface.

The new Stage3D API’s (previously known as ‘Molehill’) have enabled us to push a vast number of polygons and complex shading effects not previously possible in Flash.

This project is an ongoing experiment, watch this space!

Technology

ActionScript 3.0
Flash CS5
Flash Player Stage3D
Pixel Bender 3D