As was briefly mentioned.... Tribes 2 gave the player a body model. It''s a first person FPS, if you look down you see your legs as they run and such, And sometimes even your free hand will briefly come onto screen.

You had the option of turing off the body, but I much prefer it. There are no drawbacks I can think of. It certainly didn''t slow down my system.

..It''s been done. And done flawlessly.

Any FPS that has any sort of jumping would benefit greatly from visible feet.

When I played tribes2 I experimented with turning on the first-person player model a bit, but I found it too irritating for the most part, blocking out even more vision. As for gun models, I actually like them, and find a failing in alot of games is either bad gun models or bad animations detracting from the fluidity of the environment. Would adding a first-person player model detract from the illusion of being _in_ the game for a player? But then again, I just said I like the gun models in games, so they might be fine if implimented properly, just making it feel more like a 3rd person game

In SWAT 3 you can see yourself in mirrors but not when you look down.

In Operation Flashpoint the same kind of model is used to render a player or a weapon (or a transparent vehicle), regardless if it is the player himself or another one. Additionally the camera is fixed at the player''s head. The only exception is the interior of vehicles that cannot be viewed from any angle at outside. This system has two implications:

1. The weapon in first person view looks quite bad due to camera position, and it tends to get even worse if the weapon is a low-poly one. That''s what turned my off OFP first time I played it before I entered the gameplay: "Hell is that supposed to look like a M16???"
2. You can see your legs and arms, just like you can see them of any other player. However, a bad side effect I''ve noticed is that in a certain few situations the camera is no longer centered in front of the player''s head, due to a special animation. The result then is that the player sees his own head.

So how is the player represented in the world then (for use in collisions, eg: bullet collisions with player)? Perhaps a bounding box would do the trick? Or perhaps you could have a plane that is perpendicular to the viewing vector (which is basicly the whole 2d screen) and check whether bullets hit the plane...How do most fps''s do this?

Last I heard Call of Cthulu is going to have a player model and with good reason. Being less of a FPS and more of a horror/detective game they gave the player a more natural method of healing - you put a bandage/medkit in your hand, look down and target the body part that is wounded - the wounds showing up on your body as you take more damage.

They say they are going for an interfaceless game. You want to see how many bullets are left in your revolver? You have to open the chamber and look at it.

Could be a really good idea if implemented well. If implemented badly it could ruin the whole game.

Sounds like a good idea for a horror game - being able to see your character''s body. Opening the chamber to check the bullets - I like that.
But what if you get wounded in the back? What happens then?

I imagine you''d have to ask for help. Or else bleed to death.

I don''t think that such a game will be able to reach the ideal set by the idea of the system. It would take some kind of synaptic interface to make it work right. In the best case scenario, one where you can convince a player that the body on-screen really is THEIR body, the game would be plagued with little shortcomings. Players would want the avatar to have all the options that they would have in that situation, and that''s simply inconceivable. I hope the game is impressivle and successful, and I''d like to try it, but I''m not going to hope for what it promises.