Even though the TrueDepth camera system on iPhone X is primarily used for Face ID, there have been plenty of other uses for Apple's advanced facial recognition system.
For one, there's the immensely wacky Animoji, which tracks the user's facial movements and superimposes them into animal faces, turning the iPhone X into an instant Pixar animation machine. People have also taken advantage of this to create Animoji karaoke. Yep, that's exactly what it sounds like.
There's never quite anything like this, ever: A Japanese developer just used to iPhone X to make his face invisible. The results are unsettling and amazing in equal measure. With the help of Unity, ViRD game developer Kazuya Noshiro was able to completely erase his face, save for his mouth and eyes, as shown in a short clip he shared on Twitter. He calls the little trick "optical camouflage."
"If you want to make your face transparent, we're recruiting," he said.
iPhone X Invisible Face Trick
Noshiro didn't exactly explain how he was able to pull off the trick, despite his followers asking how he did it. One person assumed he fixed the camera to pre-record footage of the background, and Noshiro told them "that's correct." In other words, the developer most likely recorded the background first, masked using iPhone X wizardry, and inserted the prerecorded background in the final composition. Voilà! Invisible face.
iPhoneXで顔だけ光学迷彩っぽくなるやつできた pic.twitter.com/aPXJcHi8Y4
— のしぷ (@noshipu) December 27, 2017
What Could It Be Used For?
There's no word on possible implementations of this neat little invisibility trick, nor is there any confirmation whether it'll appear in an app going forward. It's possible, though, that this could be included as a demo when Apple showcases more augmented reality features down the line, but apart from its "wow" effect, it's not certain how useful it would be once the novelty wears off.
If anything, the trick showcases how accurate the iPhone X's facial recognition technology truly is. That it could pinpoint exactly the shape of the developer's face and map out the eyes and the mouth is pretty cool, and it proves that the TrueDepth camera system is far more complex than anyone would like to think. Hopefully, Apple introduces some more clever uses for it in the future and not just Animoji, fun as they may be.
What do you think of this invisibility trick? Pretty cool or just a plain gimmick? As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
