Eye tracking in video games | Hacker News Reader

Eye tracking in video games

theverge.com

53 pointsPhithagoras35 comments

For everyone who hasn't played SOMA, give it a try if you like video games and/or philosphy (related to self discovery).

The game itself has great mechanics, environment and audio. But the story is what makes me like the game more than anything. It makes you think.

I 2nd this. Loved the game. Played it just a couple months ago for the first time. It's not as scary as the developer's other game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but I actually liked SOMA's story more.

I think the game is significantly misunderstood (although fortunately, still appreciated) - IMHO, the developers wanted to make an unsettling game, rather than a scary one, so the typical comparison with Amnesia, which is a pure horror, is somewhat misplaced.

I actually really recommend playing it with the mod that makes almost all monsters non-aggressive.

It's great for players who are not into horror games, and I would argue that it makes the game even more unsettling once you realize what the monsters are.

As an off-topic counterpoint: I heard so much about SOMA, but I actually didn't get out of my apartment because of game mechanics (or lack of discoverability thereof). I actually didn't know what to do, as in what to click, drag, toggle, ... nothing realy worked, so I stopped.

I agree with that. They just kind of throw you in there and hope you'd figure it out. Add to it the fact the mechanics are mostly unique to that game only so there was no familiarity to help.

If you don't particularly want to play it, I can recommend watching the SOMA "movie", which is all cut-scenes (and relevant gameplay) collected into a single movie (with zero commentary added).

I did, and enjoyed it, and I don't think I would've enjoyed playing the game as much, despite playing a lot of games in general.

Here's the one I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_WfrDPUL4

Although I don't see eye tracking in games as 'the next big thing' in any sense (the few I've tried were severely lacking in the fun department), I would be interested to try playing Soma with this.

Soma had some flaws to be sure, but damn did it do some things really well. I'd highly recommend it - eye tracking or no.

One great application I can think of is depth of field adjustment. Some games have depth of field simulation, which makes far away scenery blurry. Personally I always disable it because I think it belongs to the uncanny valley: it's nice on screenshots, but it doesn't work so well in-game because the focus doesn't change with where/what you're looking at. Eye tracking, by making this feature dynamic, would I think enhance 3D rendering for relatively cheap.

Good use of eye tracking could also allow for foveated rendering, drawing the out-of-focus areas with lower resolution and leaving more time to render the areas of interest.

Now we just need cheaper dual eye tracking setups and support for lower quality sections in your screen (just lower quality where you're not looking).

Open source community to the rescue!

What you're talking about is called foveated rendering and it's already used today in VR to reduce the rendering workload around the edges.

I'm not sure I'd quite class it as in use yet, when none of the major commercially available VR headsets use it.

It's certainly being actively researched though and seems likely to be part of a future generation of VR headsets.

Eye tracking will require new headsets or new accessories but basic foveated rendering which just goes to the center could be done on today's VR hardware.

I'd like an open source solution that I could use in my editor to navigate to a particular word, end of line, etc.

In my window manager I make heavy use of "focus-follows-mouse" behavior, but what I really want most of the time is "focus-follows-eye". Especially in multi-monitor situations, I could see this being really invisibly helpful.

No mention of GT5? It tells how impressive is this feature when few people remember a game that shipped 10+M units with it, does not it? I figure it could be much more useful in AR applications than in games but, even there, it's a long shot (remember Amazon Fire Phone?).

You're thinking of head tracking. Eye tracking is very different and neither GT5 nor the Fire Phone had it.

Fire Phone definitely had it (see https://www.wired.com/2014/06/amazon-fire-phone/ for example), GT5 called the feature "Head Tracking" but, since it is played on a fixed display it was essentially tracking the direction of gaze in that setup, from the POV of gameplay I don't see much difference between that and true eye tracking.

since it is played on a fixed display it was essentially tracking the direction of gaze in that setup, from the POV of gameplay I don't see much difference between that and true eye tracking.

Absolutely not. Head and eye movements might complement each other, but they are completely different in execution. And you can't reliably track gaze from head movements alone.

Focusing on distinct objects by looking at them, for example, is something you can only do with eye tracking (except for the most extremely coarse cases where there's only one object in the general direction of the head).

BTW: Head tracking in games is nothing new, TrackIR e.g. has been around and a staple in sim racers for ~15 years now.

In GT5, when you looked in the door mirror, the camera view shifted there. How could that be different with eye tracking?

(except for the most extremely coarse cases where there's only one object in the general direction of the head)

Am I being too audacious when I interpret your quoting a part of your own previous message as your implying that: a) I did not read your previous message or did not understand it. b) The answer to my question is, indeed, positive as there is no difference but you don't want to admit that?

Thanks in advance for a reply not consisting of quotes of your previous messages.

You are correct: I'm implying a), because the GT5 mirror look is exactly such an example.

Journalists, especially Wired journalists, are not a reliable source for a distinction like this. The Fire phone did not use eye tracking for its fancy 3D effects. It used head tracking. https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-p...

The eyes are the fastest moving part of the body, rotating at up to 900 degrees per second, and they are in constant motion anytime you're awake (and sometimes when you're asleep). Trying to approximate eye tracking with head tracking alone gives you such a poor estimate of what the eyes are doing that it's not really useful.

Wired is not the only source, search google for "Fire Phone eye tracking". E.g. https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-fire-phone-features/ , C-Net is not good too? As for the Head Tracking SDK - sure, it's obviously is tracking the whole face position, it's easier than to track eyes so it's hard to imagine they would not have had it if they already had eye tracking.

Haha, no, CNET is not a reliable source for fine technical distinctions. Look, I linked directly to the Fire Phone SDK which clearly does not have eye tracking in it. I don't know what other kind of evidence you would accept.

Are you being serious? What kind of evidence is the lack of SDK? There are tons of gadgets without any SDK whatsoever in the open, do you accept this as evidence of the lack of features on these gadgets? Do you think Xbox One does not have a GPU because there is no open SDK for that? Do you think Tesla Model S does not have driving assists because there is no SDK? Amazon itself and all reviews lauded "eye scroll" and stupid paralax shit on Fire Phone. They wrote articles how much effort they've spent on eye tracking and how it's going to change the world. It happened in our reality. If you missed it, forgot it or are being in denial - read the internet, it still has traces left. Please don't come at me saying the major tech sites are delusional and you are not.

"Eye scroll" was a Samsung feature... The scrolling feature of the Fire Phone was based on the gyro and head tracking, not eye movement.

Eye tracking is not necessary to implement the Fire Phone's "Dynamic Perspective" feature. Wikipedia: "Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head." You don't need to know either of these things to render correct perspective. You need to know the eye position, not pointing direction. The position is provided by head tracking, not eye tracking.

I don't think eye tracking will have much use for gameplay. It will have much use for ads though, "your eyes have moved away from the banner for more than 500 milliseconds, please try again, and remember, no looking away for 20 seconds"

Very Black Mirror-esque.

All the best video games were published before 1990.

Citation needed.

This is clearly subjective. There are many aspects of games and many games implementing these aspects. Some pre-1990 games excel at some of them and some newer games excel at others. Apples and oranges. For example, as a medium for interactive storytelling, in my own opinion, only very recently have games managed it in a way that I found more engaging than non-interactive mediums in terms of storytelling impact. Part of this, for me, is that decisions actually impact the gameplay and continuing story and things like lifelike facial animation. When engaging visuals are combined with rock solid storytelling, you've got a great movie, but when you add solid interactivity and gameplay, it really becomes something else. This just wasn't possible pre-1990.

You're obviously talking about the simple "small number of mechanics" pure gameplay games (the tetrises, bombermans, pacmans, space invaders etc), sure, there are some great and long-lasting games, but there are plenty of amazing modern games too in terms of gameplay (eg Rocket league).

No citation needed, it's the truth. But of course it's subjective, just like any opinion, which is why asking for a citation is simply absurd. That's like asking for a citation when someone says "I like ham sandwiches".

It's not the truth, it's your opinion. You said so yourself, after all.

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