I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game

Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by QRe on Sunday September 28, 2025 @05:16AM (#45402926)

First off, kudos and congrats on the launch, seems like a fun idea! I am curious, as you mentioned reverse engineering. How difficult was it to retrieve the raw gyroscope data from the AirPods - AFAIK there is no API to access this information, right?

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by anileated on Sunday September 28, 2025 @05:29AM (#45402996)

Put a sine wave emitter (or multiple) on the scene. Enable head tracking. Analyze stereo sound at the output. Mute output. There you go: you now can track user’s head without direct access to gyroscope data.

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by fiq100 on Sunday September 28, 2025 @08:00AM (#45403700)

Apple does not secretly analyze sine waves to infer head motion. Instead, airpods pro/max/gen-3 include actual IMUs (inertial measurement units), and ios exposes their readings through core motion.

It’s a known research technique called acoustic motion tracking (some labs use inaudible chirps to locate phones or headsets) you mentioned, but it’s not how airpods head tracking works

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by graypegg on Sunday September 28, 2025 @10:24AM (#45404548)

I think they're more so talking about measuring attenuation that apple applies for the "spatial audio" effect (after apple does all of the fancy IMU tracking for you), by using a known amplitude of signal in, and the ability to programmatically monitor the signal out after the effect, you can reverse engineer a crude estimated angle out of the delta between the two.

I don't think that's how this app works though, after installing it I got a permission prompt for motion tracking.

Looks like there is an API for this. Here's an example: https://github.com/tukuyo/AirPodsPro-Motion-Sampler/blob/8ac...

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by anileated on Sunday September 28, 2025 @10:11PM (#45409801)

Yup.

Since the author of the app mentioned reverse engineering, analyzing audio is a way that immediately came to mind. It should be quite precise, too, only at the expense of extra CPU cycles.

I did not imply that there is no API to get head tracking data (even though Google search overview straight up says that). It’s mostly a thought experiment. Kudos for digging up CMHeadphoneMotionManager.

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by anileated on Sunday September 28, 2025 @10:11PM (#45409800)

> Apple does not secretly analyze sine waves to infer head motion.

Duh. The mechanism I described hinges on Apple being able to track head movements in the first place in order to convert that virtual 3D scene to stereo sound.

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by echoangle on Sunday September 28, 2025 @07:36AM (#45403581)

Is it possible for an app to access the actual output played by the AirPods after 3D audio is applied?

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by anileated on Sunday September 28, 2025 @10:27PM (#45409866)

I got an impression that you can, but I have not dug into developer reference deeply enough to cite it for sure.

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Re:I built and launched the first AirPods-Controlled Game by quitit on Sunday September 28, 2025 @11:11AM (#45404924)

If you're looking to develop based on raw or processed gyroscope data then Core Motion is helpful

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremotion

"For example, a game might use accelerometer and gyroscope input to control onscreen game behavior."

The part specifically about obtaining headphone orientation is here (added in 2023):

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremotion/cmheadp...

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