Playing with Tobii EyeX
Tobii sent a EyeX eye tracker to our Global Game Jam site. Here is what it does, what it costs, and how long it took to get a working demo in Unity.
One of the perks of being a GGJ organizer is that, sometimes, sponsors provide cool tech toys to your jam site. One of this year's sponsors Tobii sent us a Tobii EyeX to play with - for free.
How cool is this? I mean, they give you a brand new piece of tech to mess with, for free, no hidden points, no scams. We received the gadget in our homes because they are cool.
Tobii EyeX is an eye tracker. You are able to integrate a new input to your applications. Not the mouse, this is obsolete; nor the keyboard, the primitive bunch of legos. You can track what your users and players are seeing at any moment. Woot!?
The best of this is that the SDK is pretty easy to use. They provide you several integrations, so if you are using any modern game development framework (Unity or Unreal) you are covered. They also provide .NET and C/C++ libraries, just in case you want to build something bigger - or custom.
New gaming laptops nowadays are integrating this technology (Alienware, MSI, Acer), as well as gaming monitors (Acer). For whoever already has their gaming gear bought, there is another option: get your Tobii device for a low price, around 120 USD per unit.
From a developer point of view, and as I said before, their SDK is easy to use. I tried with the Unity integration. The input is read as another mouse, with a slight difference: a mouse's position is a Vector3, Tobii's is a Vector2. Nothing harsh.
And that's all. In less than an hour - considering I had to read the script reference I managed to create this demo for jammers from my local site:
Please note that the wandering spotlight is following my gaze.
I'm developing more videogames with Tobii integration in the future for sure.
Cheers.