Got a 3D camera handy? You can login to Windows 10 with your face

 

The new version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system is just a few weeks away from being made available around the world, so the hype surroundings its deployment is becoming palpable. In the run up to its debut, we’ll be covering a lot of the new features it’s bringing to the table, including Windows Hello’s facial recognition, which could give us all a new way to login to our desktop or notebook systems.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to utilize the facial recognition system with just a standard webcam, as three separate visual fields are utilized to recognize an individual’s unique facial structure. The hardware needed must have 3D, standard visual and infrared cameras built into it in order to take advantage of Hello’s login system.

The one used in the above video is the Creative-branded F200 Intel RealSense camera, which doesn’t look too dissimilar to Microsoft’s Kinect system, minus a few inches and plus the tripod.

If you own one of these developer kits however, you can actually test out Hello’s recognition now in Windows 10 Build 10166, rather than waiting for the release client. There is a bit of set up involved, as none of this is fine tuned for end users just yet, but as WinSuperSite shows, it works very well indeed.

It takes just a fraction of a second for the multifunctional camera to pick up our guinea pig for this scenario, Mr. Richard Hay. It doesn’t even take much longer when he adds in the secondary security function that has him make a unique tilt of the head to further identify not only that he is who he claims to be, but that he wants the system to log him in.

It even works in the dark, meaning there’s no need for ideal environmental factors to make it detect your correctly.