[HN Gopher] Project Gameface Launches on Android
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Project Gameface Launches on Android
Author : xnx
Score : 68 points
Date : 2024-05-15 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developers.googleblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developers.googleblog.com)
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| Awesome news, can't wait to try it out
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's a good day for accessibility between this and the stuff
| apple announced.
| neverokay wrote:
| It's interesting this tech is for disabled people when Nintendo
| just assumed their players were disabled to begin with. They
| always played their games with their left hand to simulate it.
|
| Software developers are pretty terrible in applying this kind of
| empathy in our UX.
|
| Assume your app is unusable and the user doesn't know how to read
| or have hands. Hah.
| rafram wrote:
| Left-handedness is a disability? What?
| neverokay wrote:
| If you're right handed, then yeah, playing with your left
| simulates a handicap. They designed a lot of their games
| around such handicaps.
| Titan2189 wrote:
| They just had to swap out their tester every 6 weeks when
| they became ambidextrous
| n6h6 wrote:
| That isn't what they said, and it's probably not what they
| meant.
|
| What they probably meant was that Nintendo testers use their
| non-dominant hands to simulate someone who has no prior
| experience with video game controls. (Though I'm not sure
| exactly what that would mean. Maybe OP meant they use
| "backwards" controllers with all the buttons swapped?)
| m463 wrote:
| It could be a reminder to developers that they should not
| assume that they should develop for one kind of player.
|
| I remember watching an episode of MKBHD where he played a
| racing game, and the hands on the wheel were white male
| hands (he is black). He just looked at the camera and said
| nothing, but sighed. I thought it was well done.
|
| personally I hate PC games that assume WASD, or don't let
| you remap keys, or make other asumptions that are pretty
| easy to figure out you shouldn't do.
| neverokay wrote:
| _should not assume that they should develop for one kind
| of player._
|
| Or even better, if they accommodate the lowest common
| denominator, you actually can end up with better
| experiences for even experienced players.
|
| I'm looking at this tech in reverse. Sure it's going to
| help the disabled, but it's also going to enable entire
| new things in games. I fly around a helicopter a lot in
| Arma, and I'd love some simple solutions for head and eye
| tracking just with my web cam and it looks like most of
| this r&d is happening in the accessibility space, not in
| the game design space.
| GaggiX wrote:
| >I remember watching an episode of MKBHD where he played
| a racing game, and the hands on the wheel were white male
| hands (he is black).
|
| Is this actually a problem? Should every character you
| play be the same race and gender as you? Personally, I
| would not care.
| neverokay wrote:
| It depends how far they go. There are games where they
| insist I must play as a big titted whore even though I
| don't identify as a woman and even if I was a woman, I'd
| opt for more subtle whoreness not the full whoreness some
| of these games insist I must role play.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Some examples of games where you have to play as a "big
| titted whore"?
| sunshowers wrote:
| I think games are fundamentally different from other software
| in many ways. For example, games tend to revel in selectively
| sharing information (Tunic for example) in a way that regular
| software doesn't. It's hard to apply lessons from one to the
| other.
| TomatoCo wrote:
| I can't recall which standup comedian it was, but he had a
| bit about games where they're the only form of entertainment
| that tests you. A song doesn't make you dance along to
| continue. A book doesn't quiz you on its themes and slam shut
| if you're wrong. For _some_ games, being hard to play is
| their point. That 's why accessibility is great to make games
| where that isn't their point more, uh, accessible. And maybe
| even those hard games should have accessibility, I haven't
| given that front enough thought yet.
| xnx wrote:
| Even as a currently able-bodied person it's interesting to think
| about applications for this. I downloaded the Windows app and did
| a quick binding of mouth left and mouth right to my arrow keys so
| I can effortlessly flip through image galleries. (Couldn't figure
| out how to turn off cursor movement entirely though.)
| avereveard wrote:
| Absolutely. DCS is a plane combat simulator, hevely relies on
| head tracking for immersion, and the UX is literally you
| clicking buttons and some are below the HUD and left and right
| so you need all the head degree of freedom just to look around
|
| That doesn't leave much space to zoom in and out which is a
| issue because visual acuity is greater than monitor fidelity so
| some degree of zoom is required to keep tab of adversaries
|
| It'd be awesome to have a "squint" gesture to zoom in
| rvnx wrote:
| Last release and code changes on Aug 3, 2023 ?
| devindotcom wrote:
| entire android directory added yest
| https://github.com/google/project-gameface/tree/main/Android
| disembiggen wrote:
| while I'm hopeful google will be responsible long-term
| maintainers of this accessibility feature, given their "ship and
| drop" attitude (music, reader, podcasts, stadia...) I'm glad
| they've chosen to open source this. In any case, an exciting
| project!
| simcop2387 wrote:
| Yea given that it's open source, I'm hopeful that it'll keep
| going as an accessibility tool for a long time.
| https://github.com/google/project-gameface
| localfirst wrote:
| Yet to see how well this tech works but congratulations to Google
| engineers for making this open source.
|
| This could be another dimension to gestures that adds even more
| convenience for end users.
|
| ex) Swipe right on Tinder by winking, swipe left by simply
| blinking.
| solardev wrote:
| macOS has a lightweight version of something similar built-in:
| https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/64948-control-mac-with-head-...
|
| You can move your head around to move the cursor, smile to click,
| raise your eyebrows to right-click, and fart to make it to type
| the embarrassed emoji (not really, lol).
|
| But it's pretty cool.
|
| Also reminds me of the Dasher app, an eye-tracking typing app
| with text prediction. You stare at the a letter, one at a time in
| an ever-zooming tree, in order to form words:
| https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/DasherSummary2.html
| curiousgal wrote:
| Can't wait until they kill this.
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