I once heard that Apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze. Usually sharp cheddar does well with the pie but what the heck; we can do with some Swiss cheese. So finally, the news broke this week that it is official that Apple is buying the Swiss company Faceshift that is based out of Zurich. A relief in a sense because for a moment I thought Apple was kind a stuttering between ‘P’s and ‘M’s this last couple of years. Lets see..

Perceptio, PrimeSense, Polarose, …for Pete’s sake…. We have a Faceshift at Apple now. Let the speculations begin! For a moment it did feel that the crew at 1 Infinite loop in Cupertino were in a messed up do-loop with their ‘P’s.

Faceshift, as you all know by now, is a Swiss software firm that is in the business of face animation software. This is also the joint whose crew apparently worked on Star Wars Episode 7. Although the company’s news section leads with an article focused on “Why Neuroscientists are focused on Virtual Reality”, I’m guessing the company’s software has something to do with the facial animation and expression.

Many FaceShift clients want an inexpensive way to capture facial animation on a moving actor. FaceShift has a solution using off-the-shelf parts for a wearable chest-cam system. This solution is great when using FaceShift during Voice Over shoots, combined with a body mocap system, and other times when the actor wants a larger range of movement. This is straight from their website.

More interestingly, the folks from FaceShift were in our neighborhood in 2014, Thanks to OCVR and they had a very unique perspective to share about their software, Unity and Virtual Reality applications. Please take a look at the video below to understand from the FaceShift guys think of using it with VR. Thanks to Doug Griffin and OCVR.

Interestingly, 2015 has been a very 3D’ish year at Apple. Almost all through the year they have been filing patents related to 3D, Facial Recognition and other cool stuff in this area.

In Jan 2015, Apple polished up a patent filing from 2012 that appeared to be a future 3D camera and extension of their 3D Parallax UI to their Carplay and watch. The addition of a stereoscopic or 3D camera is a very important considering Apple’s acquisition of Israel’s PrimeSense. In Feb, Apple was granted a second radical axis based multidimensional filing system. On April 9, 2015, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple relating to an OS X desktop filtering system that could allow a user to transform their desktop to a 3D GUI. This was followed in May with Patents around a Projector System Designed for Controlling Games on iDevices via Gestures. There was also the patent for Headset similar looking to the VR headsets and last month in Oct, it filed an application for Miniature Optical Projector and Biometrics for Online Commerce. There was also the Metaio acquisition last year that I wrote about.

We could speculate a lot regarding Apple entering VR via Faceshift et al or discuss strategies around how your beautiful Selfie will enable to lock and unlock the new iphones or emojis & avatars based on your facial expressions but who knows..

For Now, lets all enjoy some Apple pie, Swiss Cheese and a cup of Coffee.