Hack Lets Your Control GTA V With Your iPhone

Despite the prevalence of smartphones, few consoles and console games take advantage of this "second screen" available at our fingertips. Some games even have in-game phones that point to the fact, but don't always tie into the real world. While some games actually do use your mobile device as an extension of your game, GTA V isn't one of those. Well, at least not without this latest, still unpublished, hack. YouTube user " DIY Projects Planetleak" published a video showing how he controlled the game's in-game phone using, well, his iPhone.

With this hack, a player can theoretically control the game characters smartphone using his or her own real-world iPhone, which seems like a more natural way to control it, except for some caveats. For one, you don't control it like you would normally control an iPhone app. Swiping up or down on your iPhone screen, for example, only scrolls through the in-game list one item at a time, as if each swipe is translated to a single joystick movement. Second, while the iPhone does mirror the interface of the in-game phone, the contents, of emails or messages for example, don't appear on your phone, forcing you to still read on the big screen.

Sadly, there isn't much information to go on aside from this video demonstration. DIY Projexcts Planetleak only mentions the use of an Arduino Leonardo and an Ethernet shield. connected to the PC In theory, the iPhone connects to the Arduino running a web server, which translates gestures on the phone into keyboard and mouse actions for the game. No modding of the game was involved to make this work. Unfortunately, there are no instructions to replicate this experiment.

DIY Project Planetleaks is contemplating putting it the app up on the App Store but not without some more work. For one, the app needs to work faster because the lag is clearly visible. He is also contemplating switching out the Ethernet connection for Bluetooth. That said, now that the information is out there, others might try to also make their own twist on this iPhone remote control for GTA V.

VIA: Engadget