Motion controlled gaming is the way of the future? Screw that! The future’s all about ocular sensing! EyeAsteroids (why not just…Eyesteroids?) from Tobii Technology uses the company’s supposedly magical eye-tracking wizardry to tell where you’re looking on screen – allowing you to blow stuff up with your eyes.
It works by bouncing bits of infra-red light off of your corneas, and using software tracks the changes in your eye position to know where you’re looking.
“In other words, the eye tracker works much like you would if you face another person and estimate at what they are looking just by observing their eyes,” says Tobii’s website, spotted by Eurogamer.
The company says it’s got all sorts of applications for gaming such as:
- Control your character with a joystick, but aim with your eyes
- Aim with a wireless controller and turn around by looking to the side of the display
- Establish genuine eye contact with characters in a game
- Look a bot straight in the eyes and give a command using your keyboard or voice
- Create an emotional intensity that makes characters act as real humans responding to your gaze
- Adapt the game action to your attention and mental state.
So…how long until Microsoft buys Tobii and slaps this stuff in Kinect 2? Tobii’s produced 50 of the EyeAsteroids cabinets (at just $15 000 each!), and is currently playable at London’s Trocadero. Presumably, pirates and those with lazy eyes will be left out – just like the are with stereoscopic 3D.
Last Updated: February 2, 2012
