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Gaze Gaming Tech Promises Faster Eye-Controlled Interaction
NewScientist is reporting that further research is progressing on new types of user input devices. Specifically, "gaze gaming," a technology that promises faster interaction using only your eyes. Currently technology for sight-based interaction is far too slow for practical applications in things like gaming. "Eye-gaze systems bounce infrared light from LEDs at the bottom of a computer monitor and track a person's eye movements using stereo infrared cameras. This setup can calculate where on a screen the user is looking with an accuracy of about 5 mm."
It would be really useful to be able to move the cursor only by looking at the point on the sceen I want it to be. That could save my wrist from carpal tunnel syndrome and it could also incement my productivity by making the pointer go quicker to where I want it to be. I hope it will have pixel accuracy, but even if it does not, I am sure, time a few years, it could become the perfect input device.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Blinking could be an issue, you're going to do that involuntarily. Maybe with an extra long blink, or specifically one eye for a click (Then you could get left and right clicks) you don't generally close one eye involuntarily.
I was thinking a contact lens with an inlaid tracker could improve the accuracy.
I already have suspicions that sitting in my cubical in front of my good old CRTs and other equipment is already unhealthy enough, wouldn't want to add more EMR in my face on top of that. Although I know there's nothing inherently unhealthy with IR EMR...
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This means Nintendo's next generation of console will be called the sii?
For single-player games, this device could possibly enable some sort of selective rendering technique, where the objects sitting at the focal point are rendered in much more detail than the periphery.
This seems like a good idea in theory, but in reality we rarely keep our eyes fixed on any point with all that much precision. Our eyes are always shifting around to get a bigger picture of things most of the time, even when we're trying to hold a steady gaze on something. Trying to precisely control a game, or anything else, with one's eyes seems to me like much more trouble than it's worth.
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Darting eyes indeed!
Why oh why do I have to think about a situation I was in a few years ago.
I was taking driving lessons together with a friend of me. I was sitting in the backseat when the driving instructor was explaining how it was very important to look ahead, but also that _you will tend to go wherever you are looking_.
And as if to emphasize the importance of this, our sometimes playful Universe introduced a few seconds later this synchronicity in the form of one of the most stunning blonde girls we have ever seen.. (oh those legs!)... my friend almost hit the sidewalk and I can still hear our driving instructor saying: "SEE!? That's what I mean! Keep your eyes on the road"
It was such a brilliant moment.
Well I work on these kinds of systems, and that 5mm is not a limitation of the system, it's a limitation of the eyes.
The fovea (dense area of rods and cones) in the retina is large enough to give you approximately a 1 deg cone of "focus". Which means depending on the distance, you can focus on an area of a given size on the screen. So even with a perfect eye tracker, you cannot pinpoint gaze location exactly just by measuring eye orientation. Accuracy depends on distance from the screen, but 5mm is in the ballpark for what you can achieve (and that is with a perfectly calibrated system, real accuracy will be worse).
Yes, and eventually they'll create a console that can read your intentions without any conscious effort on your part at all - all you have to do is exist.
This console will be called the Bii.