What you need to know
- A new feature within iOS 13 called FaceTime Attention Correction finally fixes wandering eyes.
- It uses ARKit to grab a map of your face and readjust your eyes automatically.
- You'll never look as though you are staring into the abyss anymore.
Apple is finally going to fix one of FaceTime's biggest annoyances with iOS 13. Hidden in the third developer beta of iOS 13 is a new feature called "FaceTime Attention Correction" that fixes those wandering eyes when you're using the service to video chat.
First spotted by Twitter user Mike Rundle and later demonstrated by Dave Shukin, the new feature is baked into the latest developer beta and uses some sort of magic to fix those offset eyes while using FaceTime.
How iOS 13 FaceTime Attention Correction works: it simply uses ARKit to grab a depth map/position of your face, and adjusts the eyes accordingly.
Notice the warping of the line across both the eyes and nose. pic.twitter.com/U7PMa4oNGNHow iOS 13 FaceTime Attention Correction works: it simply uses ARKit to grab a depth map/position of your face, and adjusts the eyes accordingly.
Notice the warping of the line across both the eyes and nose. pic.twitter.com/U7PMa4oNGN— Dave Schukin 🇺🇦 (@schukin) July 3, 2019July 3, 2019
According to Schukin, the feature uses ARKit to take a depth map of your face and then seemingly adjust yours eyes accordingly during the chat so it never seems like your are just staring into the abyss. Straight up, the effect looks near perfect. It'd be hard to notice the effect taking place unless you were truly paying attention.
He went on to demonsonstrate how you can tell the effect is taking place by passing his glasses through the frame and if you look closely in the eyes, you can tell there is some warping taking place.
Overall, the feature is amazing. It's one of those ideas that you never really thought about but now that it is available, you see how useful it is. We should note that Apple does give users the option to turn off the feature within the Settings for FaceTime, but once seeing how useful it is, we don't see why would you want to.
Haven’t tested this yet, but if Apple uses some dark magic to move my gaze to seem like I’m staring at the camera and not at the screen I will be flabbergasted. (New in beta 3!) pic.twitter.com/jzavLl1ztsHaven’t tested this yet, but if Apple uses some dark magic to move my gaze to seem like I’m staring at the camera and not at the screen I will be flabbergasted. (New in beta 3!) pic.twitter.com/jzavLl1zts— Mike Rundle (@flyosity) July 2, 2019July 2, 2019
We're not yet clear on that that means for the feature. As of now, the feature is only available through the third developer beta for iOS 13 for the iPhone XS and XS Max. We're certainly crossing our fingers Apple rolls out the feature to everybody once iOS 13 becomes available to the public in the fall.
