How to use subtle AR filters to survive your Zoom meetings?
Why am I playing PONG and Asteroids anno 2020? Since the moment governments worldwide have imposed lockdowns, we’ve been spending our days videoconferencing with our collegues in endless Zoom meetings. We’re stuck at home sitting behind our computers captured by a webcam that lets our fellow videoconference attendees see if we’re still participating.
To escape, some of us have tried to replace the live feed with a video loop captured earlier. And coder Matt Reed has created an automated AI avatar that can activately participate in the conversation with prescripted replies on prescripted triggers. But replying with proper relevant answers obviously requires real participation and listening. But how to keep up the required level of concentration while looking at a set of still faces against boring videoconference-proof backgrounds? That’s what we look at these days, despite the technical possibilities of swapping backgrounds and even applying AR face filters.
Within the short timeframe the habbit of videoconferencing has become the new normal, some etiquette rules have already been established. We’re assumed not to pretend we’re Zooming-in from a tropical beach, nor from a distant rotating galaxy. And enhancing our looks by activating a funny hat and then a weird mask and then back to another funny hat, is not appreciated (anymore). Still, the facefilter technology does hold the key to fixing our current attention problem. Not so much the AR filters to apply to yourself and for others to see, but the interactive features of the Snap screen-overlays combined with scripts to detect the position and rotation of our head can be used to create some helpful solutions.
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For example, it’s possible to watch the conference feed and play a game at the same time. Not a game you’re playing with hand gestures, the moderator might assume you are raising your hand to pose a question. But with subtle head movements, or even the occasional blink of an eye. Not too much blinking of course, because of psychological reasons that will unwantedly signal something to your fellow participants too. What’s needed is a game that does not feature frantic full screen animation effects, but the contrary. The worlds’ first videogame, the game of PONG, seemed to be the most obvious choice, being an ultra basic game just consisting of a small white square being hit from side to side by two white rectangular bats. Because the current Zoom/SnapLens technology does not allow scripts to connect externally, multi-player synchronisation is not possible yet. Hence, the launch of “Solo PONG”!
As a way to keep up the level of attention, this experiment is scoring fine. But to be seen playing a game while chatting might cause the other attendees in your call to assume you’re not interested in their discussion or topic. So a more subtle, more transparent or even invisible overlay was required to be able to secretly play a game while videoconfercing.
The Maze experiment was the next attempt with a transparent playing field merged into the webcam-feed with the head movements up, down, left and right moving an additional cursor around the maze on the screen. Still, it took me one last step to come up with a set of properly incognito gaming elements that could be used on the screen without raising suspicion that they’re actually part of a game being played. With a cursor as spaceship and the infamous Mac beachballs as “Asteroids”, this freestyle remake of the classic arcade game can be played without being noticed by your fellow conference attendees.
To give these AR overlay-effects a try, install the Snap Camera application on your computer and open the settings tab of your videoconferencing program. Choose the Snap Camera program as the supplier of the webcamfeed. Within Snap Camera, there’s a searchbox to search for funny hats (don’t) or weird masks (don’t do that either during a call) but search for ‘videoconference’ and you’ll get an overview of the games mentioned above.
You’ll be looking forward to you next working day with loads of video-conferences scheduled!
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