Cool experiment! But maybe I'm not understanding something. When a human can't see an object in sufficient detail they lean forwards to increase its apparent size in their optical field. This breaks that fundamental interaction. When you lean forward it stays the same size. Argh! In other words if your eyes are good enough to read the large text, they'll be good enough to read the small text when you lean in - nothing has changed, the system maintains the text's apparent size. If on the other hand your eyesight isn't good enough to read the large text leaning in won't help!
Great idea, a couple of small improvements would make it even better:<p>* Use a moving average, to avoid flickery transitions<p>* Animate the text to the target size rather than changing in steps. This would mitigate the flickering problem too.
Neat, but this completely ignores the real reason people have trouble with small fonts: bad eyesight. The size the font needs to be is a factor of distance and eyesight. The real solution is to just use the default font size and have users adjust that to their preferences.
Neat, clicking through the attributions, Headtrackr (<a href="https://github.com/auduno/headtrackr/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/auduno/headtrackr/</a>) by auduno of Opera Software looks quite useful. That's in turn based on ccv (<a href="https://github.com/liuliu/ccv" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/liuliu/ccv</a>), which I knew about, but Headtrackr looks much nicer to use if you just want headtracking out of the box. It does some trigonometry, based on some assumptions about field of view, to provide the 3d coordinate estimates needed for demos like this, whereas ccv focuses on object identification/tracking within the 2d image (and is much more general, so more complex to use out of the box).<p>The Headtrackr guy also put up a demo of a game controlled using head movement: <a href="http://www.shinydemos.com/facekat/" rel="nofollow">http://www.shinydemos.com/facekat/</a>
Cool, another potential tool against poorly readable sites.
I just created <a href="http://cantheysee.it/" rel="nofollow">http://cantheysee.it/</a> for web developers to (roughly) simulate and test for users with poor eyesight.
And this is the answer to the "race against the machine" - how will automation that is destroying jobs provide value no-one ever thought of.<p>Total "cat-flap" moment - its not something you ever think of, but once you see it, its obvious.
I don't have a webcam installed on this machine so I can't test the implementation but what a BRILLIANT idea. This is exactly how cellphones should work; judge distance and then resize the reading pane to accommodate.
Brilliant! Couldn't get it running in FF, but works like a dream in Chrome.<p>Very useful for interfaces which may run on, say, a TV. Knowing the physical size, or the viewport dimensions, doesn't tell you how far away the user is.
I'm mostly impressed by the image analysis. Performance and the fact that it runs on javascript. Well I've heard of ccv.js before but not seen it's capabilities for pixel analysis. Now I have even less excuses to reimplement that broken real time image analysis app that I made for my bachelor thesis.<p>Hmm, there are no explicit licence terms in the repositories of ccv or headtrackr though. :/
This is really awesome, although a bit spastic at times. I'm not sure if this is the proper way to use this concept, but I could see how this concept could be used in similar fashions for setting settings. Like set it once, and then have that size apply to whole site or something. Either way, never clever idea, and well done! :)
Cool experiment! It works especially well if you substitute a face for an optical illusion poster (<a href="http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lgpp0906+cogs-twisting-cogs-mind-warp-illusion-poster.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lgpp0906+cogs-twisting-cogs-mind...</a>)<p>In all seriousness, it seems to lock onto that poster quite often.
This is awesome. The algorithm seems to have some trouble with glasses and headphones, but works pretty well otherwise. It's such a simple idea, and with the new web technologies becoming widespread, I expect that we will see more of this sort of thing in the future.
This is very neat!<p>The main issue I could see implementing this is that you'd have to constantly get permission from the user to use their webcam. I'm not sure I'd trust a site to just use my mug for improved readability.<p>Could be great for games though!
Hi everyone, thanks for your feedbacks! :)<p>More ideas <a href="https://twitter.com/markodugonjic/status/301013228463476736" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/markodugonjic/status/301013228463476736</a>
This is really slick. I think it'd be great as a browser plugin so I could use it almost like an accessibility tool on sites with horrid typography. It seems better than cmd++.
Nice, I built something similar with a buddy using a kinect a couple month ago. Think poster not website.<p><a href="http://youtu.be/Xy8oRmoV8Ag" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/Xy8oRmoV8Ag</a>
Nice experiment...<p>If only my laptop-mounted webcam wasn't next to me instead of in front of me together with my laptop 'cause I always use it with external monitor, keyboard, and mouse :p
That's so cool! I wonder if anything like this will ever be standard. I imagine people would be creeped out if their webcam was always on, but its a really cool concept.
This is pretty cool! does something like this exist for eye-tracking? i.e. have it zoom areas of text you are looking at? could be great for people with poor vision
I took it one step further and integrated rotation into the mix:<p>check it out.
<a href="http://codepen.io/JAStanton/pen/meDLB" rel="nofollow">http://codepen.io/JAStanton/pen/meDLB</a><p>too far?
This is an impressive demo however I usually move my face closer to the screen because the font is too small.<p>It would be neat to see a demo of parallax using a webcam.
very neat. Perspective bug: nodding your head down or up or turning it to the side makes your face appear smaller to the camera which will increase the text size.