Eye tracking peripherals like the one being developed by Tobii and
SteelSeries could offer an enhanced gaming experience, but unless they
get support from major platform manufacturers like Microsoft, Sony or
Nintendo, "I'm skeptical about the ability of such a product to be
anything more than a niche product," said Lewis Ward, research director
for gaming at IDC.
One of the biggest bugbears for gamers has long
been the need to use a joystick to both track a target and control the
motion of their avatar or weapons, but at International CES 2014 next
week, Tobii Technology will demonstrate a new solution.
Tobii has teamed up with SteelSeries, the companies announced Friday,
to produce what they claim will be the first mass-market eye tracking
peripheral for gamers.
Tobii Video:
Tobii & SteelSeries create the future of gaming with eye tracking technology
Tobii will demo its EyeX Controller at CES as well as offering a
Tobii EyeX Developer Kit for preorder to developers at the show for US$95, presumably to encourage the creation of games that rely on eye tracking.
An eye tracking gaming peripheral "will make targeting in
first-person shooting games far quicker and far more fun," Rob Enderle,
principal analyst at the
Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.
SteelSeries will announce further details about the partnership and products over the next several months.
Tobii's Technology
Tobii's eye tracking technology uses one or more near-infrared
illuminators that are invisible to the human eye to create reflection
patterns on the corneas of users' eyes.
Image sensors capture the images of the users' eyes. Those images are
processed to detect the exact position of the pupils and/or irises,
identify the correct reflections from the illuminators and pinpoint
their exact positions.
A mathematical model of the eye is then used to calculate the position of the user's eyes in 3D along with the point of gaze.
"I can understand the value of eye tracking in the context of video games," Lewis Ward, research director for gaming at
IDC, told TechNewsWorld. "It goes along with the idea of natural user interfaces or more human-centric approaches to technologies."
'First' is Such a Strong Adjective
It's not clear whether Tobii's gaming peripheral will indeed break new ground.
"We've had eye tracking technology around for a while," Enderle said.
"There have been some attempts to create eye tracking products, but I'm
not aware of anything that has made it to volume."
Mirametrix Gaming already offers the
S2 Eye Tracker and associated software to gamers, and claims that is the first such product on the market.
Here's the catch: The S2 Eye Tracker starts at CA$5,000. Academic and volume discounts are available.
Mirametrix did not respond to our request for further details.
Other companies offering eye tracking products include LC
Technologies, SMI and Dynavoxtech. While their products are not offered
to gamers, the technology could be adapted for such use.
Meanwhile, LG and Samsung both offer eye tracking technology in
mobile phones, and Apple will reportedly include eye tracking in a
forthcoming hybrid product called the iPad Pro. It's not clear how eye
tracking technology in mobile devices might impact gaming.
Will the Market Love the Product?
Unless the new products from Tobii and SteelSeries get support from
major platform manufacturers such as Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, they
may not take off, IDC's Ward suggested.
"Until it's built into a given platform as a standard piece of
technology that would be propagated for the next five to 10 years and
you could count on it as a developer or a publisher, I'm skeptical about
the ability of such a product to be anything more than a niche product
or something that's going to move beyond the novelty stage," Ward
explained.
Eye tracking might provide a subtle yet immersive and more powerful
gaming experience, but "whether that's worth $95 and X amount of time or
money from game developers to create games is doubtful, because all you
have to do to provide a better experience is to tweak the controller
half an inch," Ward stated.
"If you look at eye tracking technology as just for gaming, it's not that interesting," Maribel Lopez, principal analyst at
Lopez Research,
told TechNewsWorld. "But if you look at gaming as the first real-world
application, then it's opening the door to other applications of the
technology."
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source:
technewsworld.com