Hands-On with FOVE Eye Tracking VR Headset

We've tried several virtual reality headsets that track your head movement, but FOVE is the first that also tracks your eye movement. At this year's Game Developers Conference, we put on FOVE's latest prototype headset and chat with the company's CTO to learn what eye tracking can bring to VR.

[jextra]

Eye contact in a social game would be absolutely amazing. It could help people (myself included) get over social phobias. It's almost as if the game knows what you're thinking of because eye movements are very subconscious.

[CactusbIah]

Eye-tracking and 1440p. I'm loving all the new competition.

[Timelywizard]

This would be great for RPGs. You could have NPCs say hello to you when you make eye contract, then speech recognition could help the NPC determine whether or not they like your reply (if you reply at all), possibly ending in a brawl in the street. Or a vendor noticing you looking at something and trying to get you to buy it. Shit's gettin real.

[MrMargaretScratcher]

I like the little stroke he gives it at 3:33 . . . :D

[thatking]

Eye tracking is kinda necessary for immersive VR.

[clatz]

This is the most exciting VR interview I have seen.  You just get a taste for the possibilities with eye tracking, I'm very excited for the future!

[jacobknothanks]

I was waiting for someone to implement tracking into the eye piece, and here it is! Now I am interested in VR

[DJ_Blaker]

All these VR companies need to join together and build one solid perfect VR... Share research and development... Team together instead of for greed... Imagine the possibilities if the worked together...

[CorneliusSneedley]

Regardless of the current implementation regarding the UI, this is a huge deal. In reality we move our eyes far more often than we move our heads to look at or track things, but up until now in virtual reality we've had to move our heads to do so. This has the potential to make the experience far more immersive, plus we won't look as goofy. :)

[poorlymadeproduction]

The depth of field thing is actually incredibly cool!

[AdmiralBison]

so many possibilities are opening up in Virtual Reality now...
exciting times.

[BryceRogers]

This was a really good interview with excellent questions. What FOVE is doing with eye tracking is an awesome first step into what I think most good VR devices will want to be incorporating before too long.

[TukenNuken]

This is the VR headset I'm most excited about.

Not sure if I understood this right, but if this allows me to run VR on a lower end PC then it's an almost certain buy for me.

[BlobVanDam]

Looks like a promising start. Lots of interesting developments in VR happening this year. I also notice they're using Unity for their testing and demos.

[gregdalton]

The "Five Eyes" Privacy Shield from Echelon...I love it...

[Lori_P]

This is so cool! Eye tracking will probably reduce motion sickness :)

[DeathBringer]

Trust me, people would love to walk around a game like Skyrim, make eye-contact with certain vendors or shop keeps, have them dynamically react and say hello as your eyes meet, it adds a whole new layer of interaction and realism to something that, the whole point is to inject as much immersion as possible while still being a fantasy game.

[sverrenyb]

this sounds really cool, hope they this will be a default feature of vr

[nicholasharris]

This is transformative, just attach a LEAP motion underneath to read your lips and track your jaw movements and you have the basis of the next step:

VR = Virtual Reality. AR = Augmented Reality. SR = Social Reality.

[cn]

One thing about eye tracking is that it'll help or should help cut down on motion sickness and eye strain. Currently, I'm playing RE7 in VR and the one thing I notice is that whenever I move my head, the whole picture moves but in real life, our eyes can lock on to something and what we see barely changes. That's whats needed for eye tracking.