Apple is sharing your facial wireframe with apps
I've been playing with the TrueDepth Camera APIs on the iPhone X. Some things I've noticed:<p>1) The ARKit "Face Mesh" seems to be a standard model that is scaled and skewed to fit your face (for example, it ignores glasses, still works if you put your hand in front of your face, etc). It is _not_ a 3D scan.<p>2) The "TrueDepth" data is not really all that granular. It seems similar to the depth map you get from the rear-facing cameras on the "plus" sized models. Here's what the sensor data spits out: <a href="https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/930682879977361408" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/braddwyer/status/930682879977361408</a><p>3) Apple is really good at marketing. It's been shown that, even if you cover the TrueDepth camera, features that "require" it still work fine (including Animoji and the apps that I've been developing using the front-facing ARKit APIs).<p>3.1) The lack of Animoji and front-facing ARKit seems to be a software limitation made for business reasons rather than a hardware limitation. See: Google's Pixel 2 portrait mode photos done using a single front-facing camera that have stacked up well against the ones from the iPhone X.<p>4) The scary part, which is vast dystopian databases of facial fingerprints is already being done with normal photographs. The depth data is not needed.<p>I agree with the author that the privacy implications of all-encompassing databases could be scary. But I disagree that this has anything to do with the iPhone X or its TrueDepth camera.