Submitted by Jon Reed on
Umoove Ltd., a startup founded in 2010 that specializes in face and eye tracking technology for mobile devices, has just released a game called "Flying Experience" that uses the iPhone's front facing camera as an interface. It's not the type of game you'll get addicted to and spend hours playing, but more of a showcase of the technology.
When you start the game, the front facing camera is activated and you are asked to calibrate the facial tracking. Your face will appear in a frame and a circle will appear on top of it and an empty circle appears to the right. You move the circle into the empty circle by slightly turning your head to the right. This is repeated for left, up, down and center. Once calibrated, the game begins. You start out flying toward a 3D
village and you will see potions floating about. The object is basically to explore the village and collect the potions, which keep your flying power meter up, while controlling your movement with head gestures. You can also tap the screen and hold to fly faster. It starts out simple enough but quickly gets out of control, at least it did for me. I think I didn't calibrate my "up" gesture well enough and found myself staring at the ceiling and standing up trying to avoid crashing into the ground. The technology works pretty well though and developers will surely run with it, since Umoove also offers an SDK (which you have to apply for). This is definitely worth checking out as it is quite entertaining for a bit, and it offers a glimpse of things to come, plus it's free.
You can download Umoove's Flying Experience from the App Store for free. The full name is Umoove Experience: The 3D Face & Eye Tracking Flying Game, but you can find it simply by searching "umoove". It requires iOS 5 or better and is compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It is optimized for the iPhone 5.