Apple’s iPhone X may be the future of the iPhone, but it’s that notch that is the true future. The iPhone X’s notch houses Apple’s new TrueDepth sensor that we’re currently using to unlock our iPhones and send animated poop emojis to one another.
The TrueDepth camera is housed in the notch
It’s a rather inane use for an incredibly interesting piece of technology that took the best minds at a multi-billion-dollar company to develop. To summarise, the module uses a so-called dot projector to project 30,000 dots on your face. These are then analysed and processed to create a 3D map of your face or any object that’s placed in the field of the dot projector.
While Apple doesn’t let anyone access the Face ID data captured by the TrueDepth camera, developers can use ARKit for the iPhone X to better utilise the capabilities of that sensor. ARKit is an augmented reality application development toolkit from Apple. ARKit-compatible iOS devices can deliver augmented reality experiences. These devices include all Apple devices running the Apple A9 chip (found on the iPhone 6s) and subsequent updates.
We’ve been expecting some interesting TrueDepth sensor-enabled apps ever since the iPhone X debuted, and as The Verge points out, these should soon be coming. In an example posted by The Verge, a Taiwanese visual effects artist demonstrated the true potential of the X’s face-mapping and tracking capabilities. Others have demoed methods to generate and capture 3D face scans and eventually, we hope to see the technology being used to scan objects for 3D printing applications and the like.
Early demos do suggest that the TrueDepth camera isn’t of as high a resolution as we thought, but it does seem more accurate than the face-scanning tech that we’re seeing in smartphones so far.
Published Date: Nov 16, 2017 11:53 am | Updated Date: Nov 16, 2017 11:53 am
