Jin Daily Tech Trivia: Can Sony headphones control games?
Someone just made a tool called Sony Head Tracker, which turns compatible Sony headphones and earbuds into real-time head tracking for PC games.
The interesting part?
Sony already built the Android Head Tracker protocol into the headphone firmware.
Basically, newer Sony WH / WF-1000 series headphones already have gyroscope + accelerometer sensors inside for spatial audio.
But on Windows, this feature has mostly been ignored.
So developer Nicholas Slattery built Sony Head Tracker as the missing bridge.
Then OpenTrack converts your real-time head movement into camera control signals that PC games can understand.
OpenTrack already supports more than 200 PC games, and it also works with phone tracking, webcam tracking, eye tracking, and infrared tracking setups.
With this bridge, Sony headphones can basically plug into the existing head-tracking ecosystem almost like a ready-made tracker.
Supported models include:
WH-1000XM5 / XM6 WF-1000XM5 / XM6 ULT WEAR
The crazy part?
No extra camera. No infrared tracker. No VR headset. Just the headphone you might already own.
This is the fun thing about modern consumer electronics.
A lot of devices already have hidden sensors inside. Most of the time, they are locked to one boring feature.
PS: Apple has something similar too, but sadly the protocol is not exposed in the same open way yet.
