Eye Tracking Coming To Video Games

An anonymous reader writes "Over the past several years, we've had a spate of new input methods for playing video games. Instead of just pushing buttons, now we can wave body parts around, yell at the screen, or even (weakly) control things with our thoughts. Now, we're adding an eye-tracking sensor bar. It's being created by SteelSeries, but it's based on tech from a Swedish company called Tobii, who built similar tech for cars. 'Inside the device there are two cameras and an infrared light source. The infrared light reflects off your pupil and cornea, which is then captured by the two camera sensors. Throw in a healthy serving of Tobii's proprietary image processing algorithms, and a physiological 3D model of the eye, and you can work out the position of the eye and the direction of the gaze with high accuracy. Tobii doesn't seem to put an exact figure on the resolution/accuracy, merely saying that "within less than a centimeter" is possible.' Of course, the biggest question will be how well it works, but it seems like it could be a useful supplement to normal control schemes. I can see how it would be nice to simply flick your eyes to an icon to do something, or to make it easier to dig through your in-game inventory."

Comments

Not until I see rock-solid containment of the data

[jeffb (2.718)]

Eye-tracking is a big honking window into the subject's subconscious mind. I will be extremely reticent about releasing that data into an information system.

It's creepy enough seeing the amount Google knows about me already just from searches and cookies. I sure as hell don't want advertisers to get fine-grained feedback about which ads attract my attention, never mind cranking up the distracting peripheral-vision movement to force my gaze.

And don't even get me started on the evil tricks you can play by keeping things just outside the user's central vision, no matter how hard you try to look directly at them...

Gaze-specific focal plane and depth of field?

[spankey51]

It would be cool to use the eyetracker to determine what objects the player is looking at. Measure distance from the player-camera to the object being looked at and adjust the focal dept of the camera in real-time to that constantly changing distance. The result would be a 2D projection which achieves the illusion of continuously variable focal plane based on where you look and what you look at. Combine THAT with stereoscopic equipment like Oculus-rift and you have one hell of a VR setup.

Re:Gaze-specific focal plane and depth of field?

[khellendros1984]

And while you're at it, use variable-resolution rendering for different segments of the image. If the computer knows your fovea is pointed at a specific part of the screen, then why render everything else in full-res for a single-player game? It seems like that would be a cool performance optimization.

Almost there....

[B5_geek]

I don't care about games, but I would love it when they can adapt this technology to give X magic focus powers.

I already use 'Focus follows mouse' on fluxbox, but too often I am looking at a differnt terminal window when I start typing away, and I had forgotten to move the mouse.

[Paranoid Mode] imagine how much more advertising money Google could make if they tracked WHERE you were looking. [/mode]

Lara Croft

[tiberus]

So, in short, Tomb Raider X will know exactly how much time us perv gamers spend staring at her um muscles.

Re:advertising effectiveness

[i kan reed]

And some of us will just be stuck on the terrible kerning the ad uses on its font, either way.

Pan and tilt the camera!

[Simon Brooke]

More usefully, tracking eye movement could be used to control the camera. Tilting and panning to bring anything the user concentrates on to the centre of screen would be useful in a lot of games, and would get around the poor camera placement algorithms we've all been annoyed by.

It would have not to be too sensitive - the user glancing at a status display or an incoming message should not move the camera - but I could imagine this being really useful.

The motivation for this...

[Karmashock]

game pads are crap compared to the keyboard and mouse.

All these new interfaces are just means by which an inferior input system can compete.

Its frustrating for game devs to be limited by the gamepad.

Strategy games are totally impossible. FPS games are awkward. Even RPGs need to be simplified and MMOs which are already pretty dumbed down have to be dumbed down farther.

So here is my suggestion for how to improve the situation.

Allow console users to plug in a keyboard and mouse. By all means, streamline it a bit if you must. But that in and of itself would resolve most of the problems.

Re:yuck

[vux984]

This is way better ergonomically than sliding a mouse or using your hand on a touchpad because no part of your body is actually pushing against a slide-surface.

Is it? I for one, do not want the mouse following my eye around. Have you ever played an FPS? or RTS? Do you really want the selection cursor/targeting reticule following your eyes?

I'm scanning the screen, looking at the mini map, checking the build status of units, glancing at ammo levels, ... providing cover fire in a FPS while scanning windows for activity...

I can't imagine ever wanting the 'cursor' to follow my eyes around like that. Not only would it be distracting to have some sort of eye tracking cursor flitting around the screen like a deranged idiot but it would be counter productive since we often want independent control of where we are looking and where something is happening.

e.g. I'll have the cursor positioned over an icon, but I'm looking at any enemy health meter or waiting for them to be in a certain position to time when I activate it.

This is not new technology.

[sconeu]

Tobii has been using it in adaptive communications devices for year. My late wife suffered from ALS, and she used a Tobii C17 with Ceye for speech, since she was no longer able to talk.

Adaptive quality

[jfisherwa]

You could increase polygon tessellation at an area of focus and remove detail from the peripheral. It would be very useful for triple 120Hz 4K 3D. ;)

Re:yuck

[FatLittleMonkey]

I for one, do not want the mouse following my eye around. Have you ever played an FPS? or RTS? Do you really want the selection cursor/targeting reticule following your eyes?

Why would you need a cursor icon following your eyes? The cursor is there to provide a visual feedback for your hand movements. If the cursor was your eye, the icon is redundant.

The only reason you would need a visible cursor icon in a eye-tracking system is if the eye-tracking is crappy or laggy, and you need to give the user a way of seeing when it has arrived. In which case, few people who aren't paralysed would really want to use such a system, and certainly not gamers.

Easily solved.

[RubberChainsaw]

Standard mouse control remains. Some alternate keypress is used for "interact with what I am looking at."