Apple

Yeah. You train it to recognize an object/image, and then you can respond to that however you want, programmatically. It's really cool for things like tabletop games.

For the how: Apple has APIs to including lightweight ML models for that sort of thing. You have to train a model, but for something like a card game it's super easy. For physical objects it requires more prep just because you have to take photos instead of using existing artwork... but it's still relatively straightforward.

I have a card game (a physical one, not virtual) and I want to "replace" the real cards with digital, animated, "living" ones. Ideally, I could apply this technique to other types of tabletop game, later... but cards are the current project.

This works fine on iOS and even in the Vision Pro simulator, but on hardware, the image recognition is slow and unreliable, and it doesn't track items through space in real-time. It's laggy and "floaty". Image recognition for unique, flat cards should be one of the simplest possible use-cases... and given how much more powerful the hardware is than a phone, and the fact that it works on the simulator, it sure seems like a software issue... but you can't ship Apps with such severe problems, either.

Ouch. Don't get me started on iPad "Pro". There is nothing "Pro" about a device that is so heavily sandboxed and restricted to only installing things from a single, heavily curated app store. 😫

Such great hardware and UX, ruined because their app distribution monopoly is more profitable than moving devices.