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

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.