Whoever said that you need a gaming mouse to send input over to your computer? Google’s Project Gameface is a fantastic new tool that relies on face and head movements to control mouse input without the mouse itself.
PC gaming is one of those things that just has a habit of bringing people together from all over the world. The benefit is people can find new friends and people with the same interests over the titles they can sit down and enjoy. Of course, the “normal” gaming peripherals we’ve become so used to don’t exactly fit everyone’s needs and a common issue is that some users aren’t able to use keyboards and mice in the same way some would perceive as natural.
To combat that and pave the way for more inclusive gaming, Google has developed a new tool that relies solely on the user’s face. Using a regular webcam without facial recognition hardware, Google’s Project Gameface detects facial gestures and head movements the translates those into cursor movements on a computer. Doing so allows the user to navigate a PC without the traditional mouse.
The new advancement was developed in partnership with Lance Carr, who has a form of muscular dystrophy. The disease weakens muscles over time and leads to the inability to use them to do basic tasks. When Lance’s house burned down, he lost all of the equipment he used to game with his condition. In his new place, he needed a new solution to help him get back to what he loves.
To develop the tech, Google used MediaPipe to bring together a tool that can detect 468 points on the user’s face. With that population of dynamic points, basic facial gestures to dramatic movements can be detected and distinguished by the software. The user-facing portion of the program allows the gamer to assign different actions to each expression. For instance, you can assign your left click to a smile and a right click to a raised left eyebrow. Those gesture detections can be fine-tuned based on how strong they are, which lets users set a comfort zone.
As the name implies, Project Gameface is still in development and has the potential to reach a multitude of users in the future. In preview, developers have access to the open-source code and can check the software out now. Hopes are high that this tool can be brought to life in the near feature, with other projects to stem from it.
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