"The software uses the ipod’s built-in gyroscope to calculate rotation on the y-axis, so we can look around the environment around by turning the device, there are also controls for manual rotation with a slider on the left hand side of the screen."
Cool, but the iPhone doesn't have a gyroscope, only an accelerometer. How does it detect rotations that are perpendicular to gravity?
I believe the table is on a small incline (i.e. it's not perfectly horizontal). If you think about it, it's pretty hard to find a table that's perfectly leveled anyway. I have no idea how sensitive the accelerometer truly is so it could be a hoax (but probably it is not).
If the table is on enough of a slope for the iPhone to detect rotation (yaw) it would work... But maybe I'm just hoping it does because the idea of headtracking for 3d is so fun (check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/ for a similar experiment with the Wii if anyone missed it)
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadCool, but the iPhone doesn't have a gyroscope, only an accelerometer. How does it detect rotations that are perpendicular to gravity?
http://tinyurl.com/yqh6zq
TUAW confirms that, if you set the iPhone on a tabletop, the iPhone returns 3 values:
- X: rotation around the short axis
- Y: rotation around the long axis
- Z: whether phone is face up or face down
I don't think this is possible... unless that table was actually at a 45 degree angle or something?