Eyetracking for the iPhone? - iphone

Has anyone experimented with eyetracking for the iPhone or heard of projects related to eyetracking in iOS?
Is it technically feasible at all?
How problematic would recording that data be in the light of ongoing privacy discussions?

There is a technique introduced by Johny Lee
I found this, that applies such technique.
Head tracking for iPad
Hope you find it useful.

I think this is feasible as long as the phone's camera is pointed at the user's head. It would probably require pretty good light for the image to be crisp enough for it to be able to recognize the face and eyes properly, though.
When the user isn't looking directly at the camera, you would probably need to do some sort of "head recognition" and determine the orientation of the user's head. This would give you a rough direction on where they are looking.
I'm not aware of any face recognition related projects for iOS, but you could probably google and find some existing project in some other language and port it to iOS with a bit of effort.
As a side note, there's a DIY project for the head orientation tracking part for PC. It uses infrared lights placed for example on your headphones and a camera which determine the orientation of your head based on that. Perhaps it'll give you some ideas.

I know it's nearly 3 years late but I just came accross this commercial cross-platform SDK, which amongst other things does eye tracking. I think this kind of technology will be comming in future iOS/Android versions.

Related

VR/360 playback of gameplay recording

Apologies if this question has been asked before, and apologies too if it is obvious to those with knowledge - I'm completely tech illiterate especially when it comes to gaming etc so bear with me!
I'm wondering whether it is possible to record gameplay (any console/platform) but be able to play this back in a 360/VR format?
The usecase is this:
I want to watch and follow a game but rather than having 1st person PoV, I'd love to be able to use either a VR headset device (most ideal) or a 360 viewer (tablet or smartphone) to move perspective beyond forward facing field of vision.
Ideally the PoV would follow players (think specatator mode) and not necessarily be a static camera - although not necessarily a deal breaker.
Is this possible?
How would this be done with existing tools etc or would new tools need to be developed?
Would it be 'recorded' client side or serverside - and would this matter?
Huge thanks in advance - also very very happy to be pointed in the direction of sources of info around this subject to consume if readily available.
Thanks
S
You need to connect the gameobject(character) in your game that has the camera to your VR display (wherever you are coding the display at) and write a code that takes the image that it displaces in that camera under that gameobject and make it so it is continuously updating, making it seem like you are in the game.
look here http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html

track small movements of iphone with no GPS

I have to write an application for iphone that tracks the movement of the iphone itself, given its initial position, without ever using GPS. That is, I can only use data provided by the gyroscope and the accelerometer. The distances I need to measure are rather small and the precision I'm looking for is 40-50cm (~2 feet) at the very most.
Is this possible? If so, what's the best way to go about it? Also, do you know of any existing (and possibly open source) projects that have implemented this already?
Thanks a lot!
If you integrate the acceleration twice you get position but the error is horrible. It is useless in practice.
Here is an explanation why (Google Tech Talk) at 23:20. I highly recommend this video.
I answered a similar question here and here.

How to make good looking custom ui in mobile and tablet devices?

I'm looking for an intro into designing and making a custom and dynamic UI on mobile specific platforms. As I understand Nokia(Qt), Android, and iOS all use OpenGL ES (2.0?). I haven't looked into Windows phone 7 yet so not sure what that uses. So I think OpenGL would be a pretty good place to start. While OpenGL is mostly about 3D, I'm also open to 2d ways of creating dynamic UI.
I've never really been big on designing interfaces or coming up with cool concepts but now I have an idea for a mobile app that really needs a good looking user-interface. It's sort of a half app, half game type of thing. It really targets people in the gaming community who I think are used to a bit more polish and advanced UI. I could still probably get away with a simple UI(simple not being a bad thing) but I think I at least should learn some design techniques for future reference.
Of course I realise that excessive eye candy which hurts usability, like bloated graphics that slow down the mobile, are of no use at all. I'm trying to make a sleek UI that while looking good allows the user to interact well with the app effectively.
Any suggestions, resources, experience you can share would be most helpful.
EDIT: While I'm looking for ways to use 3D graphics, I'm more concerned with how to come up with a sleek UI in a mobile. I come from a mostly web developer background, with some experience in Photoshop(CSS is the furthest I've gone in designing). I have never really had to design a dynamic interface that reacted to touch and moved all around the screen with some laws of physics attached. There are lots of such effects, such as the carousal effect, which gives the user an enhanced experience. I have no idea how to incorporate these effects into a mobile device. For example, one of the things I need this app to do is take a glassy circular object(a button) that moves around, then turn it into a sort of convex glass lens so it's sort of zooming in on the image underneath to make it look like its actually a magnifying glass. I looked around and this effect is created by a "grid warp" or a "mesh warp". Suffice it to say I have no idea how to do it.
This will help you not only with Windows Phone 7. WP7 uses DirectX 9, but not directly, you must pick XNA or Silverlight(no other options). Also these blog posts I find quite usefull.
For game, game related app I would stick to one design, and as you said start with OpenGL.
I have been searching since yesterday and thought I'd add some links for anyone interested.
Although I'm dividing them up by the platform the articles refer to, with some elbow grease the ideas should be cross-platform compatible.
Qt
Carousal animation in Qt
Shadow effect Qt
Qt Kinetic Scrolling describes kinetic scrolling algorithm in Qt(self descriptive really)
Qt OpenGL Nehe tutorials converted to the Qt environment
Iphone
OpenGL from the ground up - expansive list
Flow Cover tutorial.
Android
Android 3d Tutorial
Another Android OpenGL tutorial
Yet another Android OpenGl ES tutorial, seems people have gone open-source mad.
Custom UI on Android
One finger zoom tutorial at Sony Ericsson Developer World
3D list at Sony Ericsson Developer World
OpenGl/ES
OpenGl tutorials at NeHe, there are tons, I read through the first one (on light) and it was really informative.
TheRedBook intro to OpenGl
Books
Books list at Design4Mobile, these do not cover the technical side rather covers the things to keep in mind when designing mobiles, I think the O'Rielly one should be pretty good.
Inspiration
10 beautifully designed Iphone Apps - for a touch of inspiration
All rounder
Mobile TutsPlus sort of a gathering of tutorials for android and iPhone
That's I found in the last four or five hours, as I find more I'll add it on. I've also made this a community Wiki so others can correct any mistakes I've made here, or to add anything they feel relevant.

Making games in iPhone

Can anyone tell me what should i use to make games for iPhone...
Actually i am a simple application programmer ...but never made complicated high graphics games...
i have made some games but only simple one...
Which tool is good for me to start....
i am aware of OPenGL...is it good to start with this ??
I'd say if you're reasonably competent with iOS & Objective-C, then it might be worth taking a peek at the likes of Cocos2D. There's also the iOS port of Flixel (which you can grab with the source to Canabalt which is sitting on Github), but compared to Cocos2D - it's a little less polished due to it only being recently out there.
Unity's great if you're familiar with C# or JavaScript and interested in wanting to do 3D games - and if you're not as interested in going the full-hog with learning OpenGL ES.
Corona is the best thing for you start looking into.
I'd suggest a trip to the bookstore, to find a book which speaks to you, regarding iPhone Game Dev. A quick look at Amazon reveals quite a number.
There's a lot to consider when making games, it's a huge topic.
You should check out Unity 3D.
For someone new to iPhone development and game dev in general, I'd say start with Cocoa Touch as it is simpler than OpenGL and you can create simple games (for example words games) with it. And even if you decide to develop an OpenGL app for the iOs you still need to work with Cocoa so there is no escape from learning it.
Once you get your head around objective-c/cocoa/xcode and iphone development in general, then start looking at OpenGL.

Any idea about an iPhone Accelerometer Library?

Have looked so long for a library specialized in dealing with iPhone Accelerometer but couldn't find anything.
I have made some few sample apps, but none reaches a level of accuracy as in Labyrinth games for example, so any idea about a library for that? Or maybe an open source app?
Would be better if it's integrated in a Physics library
UPDATE: I didn't mention it, but i don't want to use game engines. Specially now, that their future is still unknown. ObjC libraries or tutorials would be better.
I highly recommend looking at tweejump. It's basically an open source version of games like Doodle Jump. It really helped me learn how to use the accelerometer to control an object on the screen.
Although you said you didn't want any game engines, this is powered by the Cocos2D library. However, Cocos2D is written in Objective-C, so there shouldn't be any issue getting anything powered by Cocos2D passed Apple.
Best of luck!
It seems that it may just be easier for you to use a game engine that works with iPhone if you are looking to make a game. Here are 2 engines that export to iPhone GameSalad or Unity 3D