Live data from Hacker News

How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

medium.com

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#11
post #8

They discuss trying to mimic the focus of real human vision, making the foreground in sharper focus than background and peripheral objects. Why is this necessary? My human vision will do that itself. For example, if I look at the room I'm in, foreground objects are in sharper focus. If I look at the screen of the computer I'm typing on, if I stare at this letter X , maybe 1-4 letters to each side are in sharp enough…

I think you have the idea backwards a bit. The system isn't interested in making the background blurry, it wants to make your exact eye point the section of the image with the highest fidelity. Then the renderer can just sort of half ass the rest of the image. It's a way to make the apparent image better than what the hardware would allow.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#12
post #5
post #3

I have worked and work for competitors of Tobii. The article is kind of biased. The cheapest eyetracker in the world is The Eye Tribe tracker ( I have worked there). They've not been able to solve the battery drain problem yet (running IR LEDs costs you) and therefore mobile gaming is out. I would assume Tobii has had similar issues. Tobii's EyeX is the only Tobii device cheap enough to go into the consumer market bu…

Is the precision in the current techno good enough to replace the mouse for non-gaming activities, like web browsing or using a classical GUI with buttons and text fields and stuff ? I'd love being able to never ever get my hands off my keyboard.

I have an eyeX and the precision is not as high as a mouse. I don't think it can ever be, the eye is just not that controlled itself.

Having low latency from the device seems even more important to me.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#13
post #5
post #3

I have worked and work for competitors of Tobii. The article is kind of biased. The cheapest eyetracker in the world is The Eye Tribe tracker ( I have worked there). They've not been able to solve the battery drain problem yet (running IR LEDs costs you) and therefore mobile gaming is out. I would assume Tobii has had similar issues. Tobii's EyeX is the only Tobii device cheap enough to go into the consumer market bu…

Is the precision in the current techno good enough to replace the mouse for non-gaming activities, like web browsing or using a classical GUI with buttons and text fields and stuff ? I'd love being able to never ever get my hands off my keyboard.

[deleted]

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#14
I'm really looking forward to eye tracking in VR, because it will make for the scariest games ever. Games could notice that you're looking in one direction, then cause a creature to skitter by in your peripheral vision. By the time your eyes or head have moved, it's gone. Peripheral visual acuity is terrible, so you'd never get a good look at the thing until the game wanted you to.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#15
post #8

They discuss trying to mimic the focus of real human vision, making the foreground in sharper focus than background and peripheral objects. Why is this necessary? My human vision will do that itself. For example, if I look at the room I'm in, foreground objects are in sharper focus. If I look at the screen of the computer I'm typing on, if I stare at this letter X , maybe 1-4 letters to each side are in sharp enough…

You're confusing a few ideas here. Focus has to do with the fact that the real world can only be projected on to our retina sharply at one distance. The letters in your peripheral vision are hard to make out not because they are out of focus but because they are falling on a part of the retina that has low resolution (also see "visual crowding"). The wikipedia page on optical focus has a good explanation of focus blur. Suffice it to say real scenes have dynamic focus blur and computer screens don't and we can subliminally tell the difference. This tech will make rendered scenes look more like real ones.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#16
post #5
post #3

I have worked and work for competitors of Tobii. The article is kind of biased. The cheapest eyetracker in the world is The Eye Tribe tracker ( I have worked there). They've not been able to solve the battery drain problem yet (running IR LEDs costs you) and therefore mobile gaming is out. I would assume Tobii has had similar issues. Tobii's EyeX is the only Tobii device cheap enough to go into the consumer market bu…

Is the precision in the current techno good enough to replace the mouse for non-gaming activities, like web browsing or using a classical GUI with buttons and text fields and stuff ? I'd love being able to never ever get my hands off my keyboard.

Not really. Based on a vague recollection of working with previous model eye trackers, the margin for error is enough to make precise selection annoying. Attempts at using eye-tracking in normal GUIs generally require some form of compensation for the inaccuracy, or redesigning the UI to require less precise selection.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#17
post #2

So they talk about 4 ways to use eye tracking, 1) Use gaze to control the camera pivot -- That sounds incredibly annoying. Like I wouldn't be able to just look around a screen without it constantly moving. Though if a system is built with this use case in mind it could be cool. Imagine having a whole 360* view on screen but with it kind of squished around the edges, when you look out to an area on the edge it could i…

> Monsters that can only move when you look away (or blink)

This could be so cool, reminds me (probably you might have been inspired by it!) to this enemies from Dr. Who, the weeping angels. I'd recommend anyone curious to look at the episode "Blink" (it seems that it is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vahAzc2l9w)

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#18
post #5
post #3

I have worked and work for competitors of Tobii. The article is kind of biased. The cheapest eyetracker in the world is The Eye Tribe tracker ( I have worked there). They've not been able to solve the battery drain problem yet (running IR LEDs costs you) and therefore mobile gaming is out. I would assume Tobii has had similar issues. Tobii's EyeX is the only Tobii device cheap enough to go into the consumer market bu…

Is the precision in the current techno good enough to replace the mouse for non-gaming activities, like web browsing or using a classical GUI with buttons and text fields and stuff ? I'd love being able to never ever get my hands off my keyboard.

A more important question is this actually what you want. I've done a bit of research on this myself.

First you need to find a way to tap/click things, and not do so with anything accidentally. Not easy. Blink will have many false positives, as will time-based solutions. Having things pop up new buttons (my original approach) becomes distracting as you gaze over many items that you don't intend to click, only to have new things happening that move so you look at them, but shouldn't.

Also eye fatigue comes in pretty quickly. There's something physiologically interesting when things that normally are automatic becomes purposeful, stress is induced. For example, dictation with speech recognition will quickly strain your voice and you can actually get RSI in your vocal chords! Eyes are similar when you use them as a primary interaction driver versus a support.

Re: How Eye Tracking Will Change Gaming

#20
post #2

So they talk about 4 ways to use eye tracking, 1) Use gaze to control the camera pivot -- That sounds incredibly annoying. Like I wouldn't be able to just look around a screen without it constantly moving. Though if a system is built with this use case in mind it could be cool. Imagine having a whole 360* view on screen but with it kind of squished around the edges, when you look out to an area on the edge it could i…

> Monsters that can only move when you look away (or blink) This could be so cool, reminds me (probably you might have been inspired by it!) to this enemies from Dr. Who, the weeping angels. I'd recommend anyone curious to look at the episode "Blink" (it seems that it is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vahAzc2l9w )

It also reminds me of the Boos from the Super Mario Bros series. Either way, such monsters would certainly be interesting in a game with this sort of eye tracking stuff included.
Post reply on HN