Eye-tracking solutions are slowly turning out to be the next important feature in virtual reality as many developers across the globe are working on it to enhance users’ VR experiences and thus put forward a smoother interface while interacting with the virtual world.
HTC Vive, which has been dominating the VR market for almost a year now, has turned out to be one of the most favored platforms for developers to experiment with new features for the Vive headsets. In order to encourage developers and bring its Vive developments on a fast track, HTC has interesting initiatives like its Vive X Accelerator Program.
Recently, we saw Chinese startup 7invensun coming with their own Eye-Tracking aGlass Development Kit which is nothing but a pair of plastic overlays having special features like foveated rendering and corrective lenses that can automatically adjust to the focal length of user’s eye-vision.
Today, another eye-tracking specialist company Tobii has unveiled its own development kit for the HTC Vive and is aimed at developers to unlock the potential of this VR technology.
Tobii’s VR4 Development Kit for Eye-Tracking
The VR4 is basically a retrofit service which consists of 4 major things:
- Tobii VR4 – a reference implementation of Tobii’s eye-tracking solution which is designed to support several HMDs
- Tobii’s software development kit (SDK)
- HTC Vive Business Edition HMD Kit
- Few examples explaining the eye-tracking interactions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBINRku82hA
President of Tobii Tech, Oscar Werner said in a statement, “Our existing demonstrations have resulted in a strong demand for a VR development kit with Tobii eye tracking. Eye tracking is the next natural step for VR, and with this offering, we are extending our commitment to the VR developer community to help provide the best experience possible for the end user while unleashing developer creativity.”
Developer Registration
For now, the VR4 Kit is solely aimed for developer use and won’t be available for public use at least for now. Interested developers can register here. Following which, Tobii will contact them with a quote for purchasing.
With more developers experimenting with the eye-tracking technology, it seems that the day is not far when we could see almost every VR headset featuring this tech.
msticapsti93 says
I believe this is going to be something because hands or additional device tracking is not the real solution