A new demo App has been released to the App Store (from May 20th) which gives the opportunity to test out the simulated 3D perspective that can be generated using head tracking.
It works on the iPad 2, iPhone 4 and 4th Gen iPod Touch.
When you run it you see your own face within a bounding box on screen. I guess this is a kind of calibration. You can then swipe through a number of different screens showing how the simulated 3D environment works.
This technology demo blew me away in terms of the sneak peek into a possible future for many App genres to utilize this sort of technology.
I think everyone with a compatible device should have it on their iDevice – even if it's only once just to have a nosey. It's an awesome "party trick" to show other people too!
I downloaded this to my iPhone earlier and I have to say I thought it was a load of crap. It couldn't detect my face properly, not sure why but it capture most of my arm too (holding it at arms length) and then keep frezzing once I got to the shapes and I was moving it around.
I get what it is trying to do and I get that it is just a demo, but it's not really 3D in the sense of 3D that comes out of the screen. It's just 3 dimentional shapes inside a 2 dimentional screen that move based on an object that was fixed during calibration.
It reminds me of AR when that first came out. I was blown away by that too but then quickly came to realise that I'd never really use it. You look like a dork holding your iPhone up to see where there nearest cafe is (when it is right in fornt of you). LOL. OK so you could point it at a landmark and then wiki the landmark from the AR, but it's just as easy to type it into a Wiki app or Google search.
and I think the same will happen with this. It's a gimicky thing that I just can't see every really being that useful. Hey I may eat my words and it may be a must have on every device, but right now, as a demo, for me it sucked and left me very underwhelmed.
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