4 ms·

What is truth? When the person on the other end of the call is looking at the image of me on their screen, the physical truth is that they're looking away from

What is truth? When the person on the other end of the call is looking at the image of me on their screen, the physical truth is that they're looking away from the camera, but the emotional truth is that their eyes are looking at me. When I'm chatting with loved ones, which truth is more important? Physical truth, or emotional truth? Consider for a moment that an offset front-facing camera might be just as serious a distortion of truth.

viraptor 7y ago
You've lost me at "emotional truth". The camera captures a specific scene. The result is processed to correct for lens distortions / colour / lighting issues. But none of those changes the content. I don't think an offset camera is distorting anything. It captures the image it's expected to capture.
- LocalH 7y ago
  But it doesn't capture the image the user expects it to capture - when on a Facetime call, they expect (or at least want, if they think about it at all) to be looking directly at the other parties to the call. All this is doing is correcting for that, hence "emotional truth". Reality is always shaped by our emotions and our mental state, and thus there is merit to the idea that a representation of reality that isn't 100% physically accurate can still be closer to what we perceive as reality.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    I see where you're going, but I disagree with the "emotional truth" idea. It crosses the line for me: fixing eyes is on the same level as a gender swap or cat face filter. It modifies content and meaning and I'm against this being normalised in normal communication.
    - sjwright 7y ago
      I don't see how the eye correction is any less of a "modification of content and meaning" than the use of an offset camera angle which it's correcting for. Just because the offset angle is currently a technical necessity and an "analogue" distortion, doesn't make it any less of a manipulation.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        > doesn't make it any less of a manipulation. I think we've got a fundamental disagreement here. We'll just have to agree to disagree :-)
        sjwright 7y ago
        In an effort to be more agreeable, I really do understand where you're coming from. I'm just openly wondering if there is a technology bias at play making stuff we're already accustomed to and which feels normal to us (e.g. cameras with rectilinear lenses capturing images from arbitrary angles) feel less manipulative than stuff which is new and technically sophisticated.
        brootstrap 7y ago
        what up SJ. I have to comment on you again my friend. Why are you so passionate about this eyeball re-drawing technology? Do you video call your family and friends all the time because you live far away? Reading these conversations i'm going a bit crazy as you try to rationalize why this eyeball redrawing business is a good and necessary tech. I think it's complete trash. Is this the tech that makes apple worth billions of dollars? Not trying to stir shit up with you. just generally curious as I have an extremely opposite viewpoint. I am 28, prime millenial love to use apps and phone age. I am a huge nerd and geek (clearly as we are commenting on HN lol). I have literally never face-timed anyone except when other people are doing it and I am nearby.
        sjwright 7y ago
        I first used a Macintosh 512k when I was around 5 years old. I had my own PC by the time I was 18 (a dual celeron 300A at one point) and I now spend my days doing programming and web development. I’m now 38 and I’ve seen my two year old son’s face light up when he sees his mum through the phone screen. My wife’s parents are on the other side of the planet and their intercontinental video chats connect them to our family. I love science, math, philosophy and photography. I should care about pixel perfect truth. But to me the value of FaceTime is entirely emotional. I say that when my wife looks into my eyes, I want to see her eyes looking at mine. The fact that this isn’t how it works now is because of optical distortion. While this isn’t a true holistic fix for the underlying distortion—that would be amazing—it looks like a neat solution. I’ve not seen it live and I’ll reserve final judgment till then. If it’s even slightly noticeable I’ll absolutely hate it. But if I can see no sign of trickery when staring into my wife’s eyes, it might just make the world a happier place, even if only a tiny bit.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      Fair enough, I disagree with your premise but I respect your viewpoint nonetheless. I do feel that we should be vigilant at monitoring which such usages we are comfortable with - while I might be comfortable with this being used for something innocuous like eye offset correction, I would oppose its use for something more nefarious.
    - eridius 7y ago
      It's not modifying content and meaning, it's preserving content and meaning. When you're on FaceTime, the image you're seeing is not captured from where your eyes are presented on the screen, it's captured from somewhere above. This is a technical defect and it means that when the person you're talking with looks you in the eye, you don't see that. This is correcting that flaw and makes it so when the person you're talking with looks you in the eye on their end, you see that on your end too. This is more akin to doing a white balance adjustment, such that you see what the scene is expected to look like rather than the raw data captured by the camera, it's just correcting for camera location instead of exposure. Another way to think about it is this is a software fix for a hardware limitation. In an ideal world we'd fix the hardware limitation, remove the software fix, and your experience would be unchanged (or actually, even better, because of the lack of distortion on stuff crossing your eyes).
- merpnderp 7y ago
  Maybe instead of emotional truth, how about the actual truth is that most people are actually looking the other person dead in the eye, as is appropriate for engaging with people. This camera magic just makes that more clear.
- sjwright 7y ago
  The offset camera position also "changes the content" just as surely as this new process which compensates for it.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The camera doesn’t capture a “scene.” It’s all just electrical impulses on a CCD. You the perform extensive processing to turn those impulses into something approximating that someone might see. It doesn’t seem a big stretch to, while you’re at it, interpret the signals in a way that reflects where the person would actually be looking. “Emotional truth” is the wrong phrase. It’s the actual truth—the person on the other side is looking at your eyes. The real issue is that the processing isn’t sophisticated enough. Instead of just moving the eyes, it should calculate what the camera would show if it were located in the screen.
  - gok 7y ago
    minor nit: Almost no camera use CCDs any more.

viraptor 7y ago

You've lost me at "emotional truth". The camera captures a specific scene. The result is processed to correct for lens distortions / colour / lighting issues. But none of those changes the content. I don't think an offset camera is distorting anything. It captures the image it's expected to capture.

LocalH 7y ago
But it doesn't capture the image the user expects it to capture - when on a Facetime call, they expect (or at least want, if they think about it at all) to be looking directly at the other parties to the call. All this is doing is correcting for that, hence "emotional truth". Reality is always shaped by our emotions and our mental state, and thus there is merit to the idea that a representation of reality that isn't 100% physically accurate can still be closer to what we perceive as reality.
- viraptor 7y ago
  I see where you're going, but I disagree with the "emotional truth" idea. It crosses the line for me: fixing eyes is on the same level as a gender swap or cat face filter. It modifies content and meaning and I'm against this being normalised in normal communication.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    I don't see how the eye correction is any less of a "modification of content and meaning" than the use of an offset camera angle which it's correcting for. Just because the offset angle is currently a technical necessity and an "analogue" distortion, doesn't make it any less of a manipulation.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      > doesn't make it any less of a manipulation. I think we've got a fundamental disagreement here. We'll just have to agree to disagree :-)
      - sjwright 7y ago
        In an effort to be more agreeable, I really do understand where you're coming from. I'm just openly wondering if there is a technology bias at play making stuff we're already accustomed to and which feels normal to us (e.g. cameras with rectilinear lenses capturing images from arbitrary angles) feel less manipulative than stuff which is new and technically sophisticated.
        brootstrap 7y ago
        what up SJ. I have to comment on you again my friend. Why are you so passionate about this eyeball re-drawing technology? Do you video call your family and friends all the time because you live far away? Reading these conversations i'm going a bit crazy as you try to rationalize why this eyeball redrawing business is a good and necessary tech. I think it's complete trash. Is this the tech that makes apple worth billions of dollars? Not trying to stir shit up with you. just generally curious as I have an extremely opposite viewpoint. I am 28, prime millenial love to use apps and phone age. I am a huge nerd and geek (clearly as we are commenting on HN lol). I have literally never face-timed anyone except when other people are doing it and I am nearby.
        sjwright 7y ago
        I first used a Macintosh 512k when I was around 5 years old. I had my own PC by the time I was 18 (a dual celeron 300A at one point) and I now spend my days doing programming and web development. I’m now 38 and I’ve seen my two year old son’s face light up when he sees his mum through the phone screen. My wife’s parents are on the other side of the planet and their intercontinental video chats connect them to our family. I love science, math, philosophy and photography. I should care about pixel perfect truth. But to me the value of FaceTime is entirely emotional. I say that when my wife looks into my eyes, I want to see her eyes looking at mine. The fact that this isn’t how it works now is because of optical distortion. While this isn’t a true holistic fix for the underlying distortion—that would be amazing—it looks like a neat solution. I’ve not seen it live and I’ll reserve final judgment till then. If it’s even slightly noticeable I’ll absolutely hate it. But if I can see no sign of trickery when staring into my wife’s eyes, it might just make the world a happier place, even if only a tiny bit.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    Fair enough, I disagree with your premise but I respect your viewpoint nonetheless. I do feel that we should be vigilant at monitoring which such usages we are comfortable with - while I might be comfortable with this being used for something innocuous like eye offset correction, I would oppose its use for something more nefarious.
  - eridius 7y ago
    It's not modifying content and meaning, it's preserving content and meaning. When you're on FaceTime, the image you're seeing is not captured from where your eyes are presented on the screen, it's captured from somewhere above. This is a technical defect and it means that when the person you're talking with looks you in the eye, you don't see that. This is correcting that flaw and makes it so when the person you're talking with looks you in the eye on their end, you see that on your end too. This is more akin to doing a white balance adjustment, such that you see what the scene is expected to look like rather than the raw data captured by the camera, it's just correcting for camera location instead of exposure. Another way to think about it is this is a software fix for a hardware limitation. In an ideal world we'd fix the hardware limitation, remove the software fix, and your experience would be unchanged (or actually, even better, because of the lack of distortion on stuff crossing your eyes).
merpnderp 7y ago
Maybe instead of emotional truth, how about the actual truth is that most people are actually looking the other person dead in the eye, as is appropriate for engaging with people. This camera magic just makes that more clear.
sjwright 7y ago
The offset camera position also "changes the content" just as surely as this new process which compensates for it.
rayiner 7y ago
The camera doesn’t capture a “scene.” It’s all just electrical impulses on a CCD. You the perform extensive processing to turn those impulses into something approximating that someone might see. It doesn’t seem a big stretch to, while you’re at it, interpret the signals in a way that reflects where the person would actually be looking. “Emotional truth” is the wrong phrase. It’s the actual truth—the person on the other side is looking at your eyes. The real issue is that the processing isn’t sophisticated enough. Instead of just moving the eyes, it should calculate what the camera would show if it were located in the screen.
- gok 7y ago
  minor nit: Almost no camera use CCDs any more.