But it at least shows that Apple is interested in greater interplay between the physical and digital realms. Why this matters: As with many Apple acquisitions, it’s possible that Faceshift’s usefulness never becomes obvious to consumers. So far, however, none of those acquisitions have made an clear transition to consumer-facing Apple products.
And earlier this year, Apple acquired Metaio, whose augmented reality technology was being used by major brands such as Macy’s and Ikea. Faceshift is a metal band, formed in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden. Apple bought face recognition firm Polar Rose in 2010, and picked up PrimeSense, a maker of 3D motion detection sensors, a couple years back. Both my software and Faceshift contain functionality to filter/smooth the data, which is always a tradeoff between smoothness and fidelity. Although Apple hasn’t revealed any initiatives on those fronts, the company could be toying with ideas given the current VR/AR efforts from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.įaceshift isn’t the only company Apple has acquired along these lines. Zurich-based Faceshift touts software that analyzes human facial expressions in real time and applies them to animated avatars and other figures in the virtual reality space. There is no need for expensive motion capture setups, all you need is a consumer depth camera and a standard computer. That avatar can be exported to 3D software used for gaming or other purposes. The camera scans your expressions, and that data is computed to train a personal avatar. Turning people into digital avatars could also prove handy with the rise of virtual or augmented reality. Faceshift is an user-friendly application. The ability to recognize someone’s unique facial expressions could be useful for enterprise security applications, as TechCrunch notes.
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