The most notable ARKit announcement was that Apple will be bringing face-tracking support to the AR platform on iPhone X, allowing devs to gain access to front color and depth images from the cameras while tracking face position and a number of expressions in real time.
In its latest earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook called AR “big and profound” while referencing all the developer excitement in building ARKit experiences. The lone dedicated onstage demo relating to AR at today’s iPhone event just highlighted a tabletop gaming title from Directive Games.
While Apple lauded that the new back-cameras on the iPhone X and iPhone 8 were “calibrated for AR,” — something undoubtedly true of any camera running ARKit — the only mentions of model-specific AR features were confined to redesigned front-facing camera tracking on the iPhone X thanks to the new camera array, which includes an infrared camera, flood illuminator and dot projector.
