I’ve been expecting a developer to do something interesting with Apple’s Kinect-like iPhone X TrueDepth camera module for months now, but I didn’t think one of the first apps to utilize the tech would be a game that involves controlling an emoji with your eyebrows.
The game, dubbed Rainbrow, has players raising and lowering their eyebrows in order to move a smiling emoji face up and down the display, in order to collect stars worth one point each. Players need to make sure their emoji avoids obstacles like basketballs and ducks.
As you may have guessed, making a neutral expression results in the emoji staying still. The game doesn’t feature levels and instead gets continuously more difficult the longer you’re able to keep your emoji alive, with the only goal being getting the highest score possible.
Rainbrow‘s controls are surprisingly responsive — and exhausting if you’re me — and subtle changes in brow movement really does change the direction of the emoji almost instantly. I didn’t expect the game’s unique controls to work at all, but they really do.
Rainbrow was also developed using Apple’s ARKit mobile augmented reality development platform, along with iOS 11’s framework to detect the position, topology and expression of the user’s face, and of course, the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera system.
While a silly example of what the tech powering Apple’s TrueDepth sensor can be used for, it’s interesting to see a developer other than Apple finally taking advantage of it.
The game comes from Washington University Computer Science graduate Nathan Gitter, according to Macrumours.
Rainbrow is available in the iOS App Store for free.
Via: MacRumours
