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Comment by drosan | Hacker News Reader

Is it a joke? "Wild experiment"? "first to take the effect mainstream"? What kind of bullshit is that?

The said effect and the head tracking principle was already used in the New Nintendo 3DS consoles that was sold millions worldwide. Not only that - 3DS' top screen has a true "parallax barrier" screen, means it displays a 3D picture with depth and all.

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N3DS face tracking is only used to correct the stereo separation (so each eye sees a separate image without having to be exactly on the center), not to move the scene depending on where you are. So if you have a scene like in that experiment, you would see it skew to the opposite direction you move your head. Also the vast majority of games don't have that much depth anyway, even at the highest setting, probably because the scene doesn't move accordingly and would make people dizzy.

Yet it was essentially the same technology that was named "wild experiment" in the article above.

Also visually the scene does move accordingly, mostly because the top display is tecnhically two displays in one and they render the scene from 2 different angles.

The virtual cameras don't change (the games would have to be changed), so the parallax effect is not there. The only thing that changes is the grid of limes that obscures one image for each eye.

The only thing in common is that both have head tracking, that's all.

Yep, and that is exactly what I addressed in my first comment - that head tracking mechanism was already used in mainstream technology piece.

This reminds me of this demo from 2007 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

And also didn't the Amazon Fire Phone have head tracking?

Also found this, done on an iPhone in 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7saRtCUgbNI

Or this table using a Kinect in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CbiOikirrg

The "experiment" is _how_ head tracking is used, not head tracking itself. I agree it's not exactly new, but nobody bothered to make it for the iPhone X until now.

Not quite the same effect. The 3DS does have an actual 3D image, but you only get a fixed view of it, since the viewing angle for seeing 3D was very narrow. This is fake 3D (hence Trompe l'Oeil), but lets you view the "3D" object from a wide range of angles, since it works via head tracking.

Both have their advantages, but they're not the same thing.

That being said, the Nintendo DSi (the predecessor to the 3DS) did have a trompe l'oeil 3D game, called "Looksley's Line Up". It had a ton of charm, but the DSi's camera wasn't powerful enough to support the feature well. For whatever reason (price), Nintendo sticks with low quality cameras. Still, I've always hoped that Looksley's Line Up will eventually make its way to another system.

Nope, on New 3DS the view wasn't fixed, it actually tracked your head position to fix the picture accordingly.

Ah, interesting! I would expect it still to be limited to a narrow vertical band due to the technology used to send a different image to each eye, versus a purely camera-based solution which doesn't attempt to display 2 different images at all.

Or could it support, for instance, rotating the handheld?

Apple are the first to innovate all tech when one's entire worldview is limited to the Apple product line.

And because Apple has the media/design world by the balls thanks to ingrained habits, they have blinders on for the rest of the tech world.

This[1] was the first person I saw do this effect with a hacked Wiimote and some IR LEDs on his head. It's mentioned in the article. This definitely isn't new. However the good face tracking does make it easier. Here's a face tracking JS lib[2] that'll do it for you if you'd like to make it happen on the web. I've been playing with this (not free) library[3] to do face tracking to achieve this effect for AR and experimental interface purposes for like three months. It's got multiplatform support that is pretty good.

I worked this into an iOS display demo in ~2009 using their basic face tracking that made for like zombie face apps and shit. The RealSense is a MUCH more solid experience, but this is not new at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&t=164s

[2] https://tastenkunst.github.io/brfv4_javascript_examples/

[3] http://www.visagetechnologies.com/

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