FacePoseApp – Head tracking application for an immersive gaming experience

Immersion is a key element in gaming. Being able to control the game with the movements of your head is increasingly being adopted to achieve that. However, face tracking tools and programs can get costly.

This encouraged the creators of FaceTrackNoIR – the popular webcam-based tracker – to create a better and more affordable solution – a mobile application that can easily turn any smartphone into a head tracker.

Head tracking on Android and iOS

There are a number of head-tracking solutions on the market that allow gamers to control the game by moving their head. Although such programs are indeed powerful, they have a few shortcomings. They are often expensive and require the users to wear a specialized headset or glasses.

The creators of FacePoseApp wanted to eliminate the need for costly equipment. Their idea was to utilize the most used electronic device that already comes with a built-in camera – the smartphone.

The first step was to find a head tracking software that was lightweight enough to run on a phone and accurate enough to ensure a smooth gaming experience in real time.

visage|SDK FaceTrack checked all the boxes. It detects and tracks faces in real time, returning 2D and 3D head pose, the coordinates of facial feature points, and more.

Since it is extremely lightweight, it works flawlessly on mobile devices as well, delivering great results with a broad range of cameras and resolutions. It is also available for all major platforms and embedded systems, including both Android and iOS.

Finally, the integration is quick and easy. The SDK comes with a detailed development guide, ready-made samples, and lots of customization options.

“The face-tracking performance of visage|SDK is accurate and fast. It makes it possible to send the head pose to FaceTrackNoIR in real time. It was also easy to integrate the tracker into FacePoseApp, with samples as a very good starting point.”

Wim Vriend, the creator of FaceTrackNoIR

Turning head movements into in-game actions

Most people already have a smartphone with often impressive capabilities. FacePoseApp takes advantage of that potential to make the gaming experience more immersive.

The application quickly and easily turns a smartphone into a head tracker and sends the 6DOF to the PC via WiFi. As a result, each real-time head movement, even if it’s relatively small, is immediately translated into in-game movement.

FacePoseApp has significant advantages compared to other head tracking solutions. Users do not need to buy additional equipment such as expensive webcams, headsets, and similar. Furthermore, the PC running the game does not have to spend valuable CPU/GPU power to track a face.

As mobile devices become faster and more powerful, the head-tracking algorithms follow suit. FacePoseApp creators plan to keep the app up-to-date with users’ rising expectations and technical requirements, taking the gaming experience to an even higher level.

“FacePoseApp runs on many devices and, even on older ones, the performance of the tracker is still satisfactory. Since visage|SDK is very actively developed, I expect that the performance on newer hardware will make face tracking faster and even more accurate.”

Wim Vriend, the creator of FaceTrackNoIR

FacePoseApp is available for download on Google Store and Apple Store.

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