Eye-Based Videogame Control

dsmith3689 writes "Researchers at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario have explored the use of an eye tracker as a control device for a handful of commercial video games. To do this, they integrated a Tobii 1750 desktop eye tracker with Quake 2, Neverwinter Nights, and a flash adaptation of Missile Command called Lunar Command. A study was performed that indicates the use of direct feedback from eye movements can drastically increase the feeling of immersion (pdf) in the virtual world."

Just watch out for the shrapnel

It hurts.

Forget video games

With this technology you could finally have a window manager that implements "focus follows mind".

Re:Forget video games

Might make transcription a little difficult though.

Re:Forget video games

I guess in that frame of mind, what will happen sooner is Ads follows Eye. Wherever you are watching the crappy Flash Animation follows you.
Or worse, nobody is watching during the ads ... your TV tuner goes in time delay mode you show what you have missed

Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

Ya know what really pisses me off. You get a link to a web site. You go there and read all this interesting product information. You look at all the pretty pictures and decide you want to buy. Then you discover there's no "Buy Now" button. There's no

Re:Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

You know the old saying... If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

http://techfee.washington.edu/proposals/2006-110 [washington.edu]

Yes, that says $24,000 just for the hardware. Software is another $4,000.

Re:Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

Pathetic. I can buy a £5000 bottle of scotch [glenfiddich.co.uk] online but I can't buy a 17" TFT monitor with eye tracking? Here's hoping someone with bigger aspirations comes up with a cheaper technique and goes and gets buy-in from games companies so the next AAA s

Re:Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

A cheap web cam: http://insidecomputer.stores.yahoo.net/usbwebcamwe p.html [yahoo.net] $7
This book: http://www.nerdbooks.com/item.php?id=1852336668 [nerdbooks.com] $45
GCC compiler: http://gcc.gnu.org/ [gnu.org] $0
A lot of time: http://www.time.org/ [time.org] $0
----------------------
$52 + tax, shipping,

Re:Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

Oh, and I found this, too: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~jerryzhu/cs540/project/rep ort/webcam/final_report.html [wisc.edu]

And there might be something good here: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~jerryzhu/cs540/project/rep ort/webcam/final_report.html [wisc.edu] but, then, I didn't poke aroun

Re:Tobii: Put prices on your web site!

Add another $2100 for the tax!

Why BB2B2B2BB2B sites use "call for price"

Then you discover there's no "Buy Now" button. There's no shopping cart. There's just a Contact tab with a form for you to submit your details. Like you've got to beg to buy their product.

At least in the industrial fan market, the requirement to request

Re:Why BB2B2B2BB2B sites use "call for price"

In other words: to prevent fair competition.

Re:Why BB2B2B2BB2B sites use "call for price"

How the hell is that not fair?

Not good for those like me...

My eyes have enough blood flowing through them that they sometimes jerk in harmony with each pulse. I can see how it'd be "bloody" cool to be able to control the camera angle by eyesight, but I'm pretty certain it'd be a jerky ride for people like me.

Hey!

I have a lazy eye, you insensitive clods!

Re:Hey! Modded funny?

Actually, you bring up a very good point. Does this device take things like lazy eye into account? Does it only track the movements of one eye or both? This would be a great tool for those who don't have appropriate use of hands or have some kind of phy

*twitch*

They have had technology like this for a while, although not as a method of input or control. They use special "eye-tracking" machines for hazard perception experiments with automobiles. I think using eye-tracking as an input device would be something that

Re:*twitch*

To add to this: we use eye tracking systems in my brain lab (at a major research university). It is, in fact, highly unusual for subjects to only look at one thing, or even to look at whatever they want to do when they do it. There are many extra eye movements (saccades) to other areas of a scene for planning and multitasking, even before the person is conscious of their plans. Here are two papers relating to eye tracking and games in particular:

motion tracking and planning:
Ripoll H. Percept Mot Skills. 1989 Apr;68(2):507-12. [nih.gov]

multitasking:
Cavanagh P, Alvarez GA. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Jul;9(7):349-54. [nih.gov]

Needless to say, any successful attempt at eye-tracking control for something like video games would have a lot of sophisticated programming to do in order to figure out the user's intentions. From my own personal experience, especially in FPS games, I rarely look where I'm shooting. I would like to keep my sensors (eyeballs) and effectors (hands/feet/other body parts) separate, to allow me to take in more information and perform mor actions simultaneously. It would also prevent any weird interactions if the training provided by the games affects the way hardcore gamers attempt to interact with the real world (although those would be very interesting to study).

Cool idea; looks like it still needs work

... or a new interface to software/games to compensate for the apparent lack of accuracy and speed (note the Quake 2 demo video), at least in FPS-style games.

Could absolutely rock if tweaked minutely for flight and other simulation games, though. :)

Re:Cool idea; looks like it still needs work

A lot of that could probably be improved with more powerful algorithms. One of the problems encountered in the Quake demo was that minor twitches threw the gun all over the place. As a result, there is a fairly simple damping (AFAIK just a threshold) in ef

They've used these for ages...

...for people that can't move. I helped someone fix their computer who had the eye tracking thing for someone that was paralyzed.

Independent view point games?

I wish they had done some demos on games with independent view point, such as the upcomming Armed Assault, Lock On and other flight sims. I'm really interested to see if it'll work better than TrackIR [naturalpoint.com].

From the Quake 2 demo, it's really not giving any a

What kind of effect...

...would this technology have on a game like, say, Dead or Alive: Xtreme Volleyball?

>_>

For the record.. no aimbotting

He totally missed the target the first time he fired... come on really? How will this help my counter-strike? If this cannot make me a better counter-strike player I could care less... geesh....

Desktop Environment Control

The one thing my Windowmaker needs is something to autofocus the window I'm currently looking at. I can't remember how many times I've drifted in thought and looked at another terminal, started typing, only to find I'm still typing in the other one :-)