About face: eyetronics scans MLB players, while Sony and 2K Sports use the data to create the faces for their new baseball games.(Scanning/Gaming)(Sony Computer Entertainment America and 2K Sports contracts with Major League Baseball Players Association)

In the 1970s, people were served up their first big taste of sports-based video gaming when Atari released Pong, a table-tennis title in which players moved a bar up and down to keep a ball (a dot) from crossing a goal line. Although primitive, the game was a success, and it spawned other, more advanced sports titles--at least in terms of that era. It didn't take long, though, before gamers grew bored with pushing around pixels on a screen.

Almost overnight, it seemed that nearly every professional athlete in practically every conceivable sport had a video game endorsement. Garners were looking for real action by real athletes--or something close to that. With the first generation of consoles, the digital athletes in the games looked generic and basic; in the second generation, they actually resembled their real-life counterparts in their looks and motions. With the latest consoles, the digital players can be considered virtual replicas; not only do they look just like their real-life counterparts, including the piercing blue color of New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's eyes and the cleft in the Houston Astros pitcher Andy Pettite's chin, but they move just like them, too, down to the unique shuffle-like gait of Boston Red Sox left-fielder Manny Ramirez.

While the new generation of consoles offer the necessary hardware to power such impressive imagery, the real challenge lies in the hands of the game developers, or more specifically, their artists, who have to be at the top of their own game in order to deliver the level of realism demanded by today's gamers. Two top-level companies in the sports-game genre--Sony Computer Entertainment America and 2K Sports--are meeting that challenge through an unprecedented joint effort. Both companies, which are fierce competitors in the market, entered into an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), the union governing MLB players, to purchase digital scan data of every player on every team in Major League Baseball. With the data, the developers would create digital characters that looked amazingly like their real-life alter egos--a quantum leap over what can be accomplished by modeling the characters by hand without the scans.

Acquiring all the scan data would require a tremendous undertaking in terms of resources and expense. Convinced that the end result would lead to better exposure for the players, the nonprofit MLBPA decided to pursue the project and took the lead, while both developers agreed to split the associated costs in exchange for the exclusive joint access to the resulting information.

THE SCAN PROCESS

Approximately two years ago, the MLBPA, along with Sony and 2K Sports, held a tryout, whereby various digital scanning companies competed for this major-league contract. Sony and 2K Sports were familiar with digital scanning and knew what type of data requirements would be needed, so they assisted the MLBPA in setting up parameters that would accurately prove the abilities of the companies participating in this play-off of sorts. Each company trying out had to show that it could digitally scan a player within a five-minute period. During the drill, the company's technical team had to set up the equipment at a designated hotel within a half hour, scan four people, break down the equipment in less than a half hour, and deliver the processed data within a few days. Sony and 2K Sports reps then checked the geometry and texture quality of the models.

A few years ago, the association attempted a similar endeavor, but was thrown a curveball by the end results, which only made it through one season of play (see "Double Headers," August 2002). "This time the MLBPA knew what it wanted and was guided by the gaming companies, and set strict parameters for the quality of the models and the actual process--how much time the company could take per player, things like that," says Nick Tesi, vice president of operations at Eyetronics, the scanning company that the association eventually signed for this project. Winning the contract, however, only got Eyetmnics to first base; the company also had to agree to "create" its own scanning space if necessary (Eyetronics brought a tent to each location). Third, the company had to disperse personnel and equipment to all the locales throughout the country where spring training was held, and acquire the scans during so-called picture day, a designated time when players were made available for league-sanctioned photo shoots for baseball cards, mugs, bobbleheads, and other objects. The home run ...