TL;DR: Epic, please add a ‘disable macro camera’ to VCam so I can use a backbone controller with it!
I have been happily surprised to find that the $99 backbone controller (I’m using the playstation edition v2) works with Vcam. There is just one caveat… or maybe a couple, I’m just beginning with it:
As the cameras on my iphone 13 look out into the IRL environment so it can track … everything, if I move close to something nearby, the iphone switches lenses to ‘macro mode’. this activates the camera that is behind the spring loaded bar that holds the phone inbetween the two controller halves. The tracking stops and the phone askes that you make sure there is nothing obscuring the camera.
I was about to try to Dremel into the backbone’s … back bone, so that it would not obscure the camera, but I would end up digging into and likely cutting the ribbon cable that runs through that area. Instead, I opened my camera app and pressed the ‘macro’ button (the little flower) so it went from yellow (on) to white with a line through it (off). I could then pass my finger in front of the camera that would have been obscured by the backbone and it didn’t activate or appear at all.
Within the Vcam app, all the controls are UE based rather than phone based. so I don’t believe there is a macro button to do what I did with the camera app.
and this be added? the control obviously exists as it’s in the native camera app and I assume the API, so it would be up to Epic to make this update available for the next rev. Can this happen? Do I have to post as a feature request maybe? I’ll take a look around.
Anywho, if this is solved, the backbone is a killer addition/accessory for vcam.