​Eye

Eye-tracking might be the next great wave in virtual reality tech. If you’re dead-set on being an early adopter, intriguing startup Fove has finally made their worlds-first eye-tracking headset, the Fove 0, available for preorders starting today.

Fove 0 promises eye-based controls for focusing on objects, controlling interfaces via eye movements and selectively rendering details more intricately depending on where you’re looking (foveated rendering).

The headset runs on Windows 8.1 PCs with Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics or greater.

For the first week, the headset is $549. Then it goes up 50 bucks to $599. But your headset won’t arrive until next year, so be patient. Meanwhile, those who backed Fove via Kickstarter will get theirs by “end of 2016.”

The Fove 0 specs otherwise sound much like those of other top-end headsets: 2560×1440 resolution split between two eyes, and a 90- to 100-degree field of view, plus a 120 frames per second infrared eye-tracking system. Fove does positional tracking, like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. But it’s unclear what apps or games will work with Fove 0. Via Valve OVR, at least 250 Steam VR games will work with the Fove 0 headset, according to Fove, but it’s unclear whether any of those will make use of the Fove 0’s unique eye tracking. The headset will also ship with a few optimized demo apps. One launch game built for Fove is Project Falcon, developed by Rewind.

CNET got a peek at Fove a while ago (see the video below, from early 2015), but we haven’t seen the recent hardware. Stay tuned for our impressions. But eye-tracking should be an innovation that creeps into other VR hardware soon. Eyefluence, another eye-tracking technology company, was recently acquired by Google. Oculus has announced plans for eye-tracking, too.


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This isn’t even the eye-tracking MSI GT72’s final form.
Aloysius Low/CNET

TAIPEI — As gimmicky as having eye tracking on a gaming laptop sounds, the demo of the MSI GT72 concept I tried out here at Computex was actually quite compelling. All you need is a brief configuration to sync up your eye movements to the computer’s Tobii EyeX tracking system and you’re all set to game with your eyes.

The eye-tracking magic is done via three infrared sensors located just below the screen. In a demo featuring the action game Assassin’s Creed, simply flicking your eyes spins the camera around — that’s usually handled by the mouse, so to move forward all you need to do is hit the keyboard. You still need to use the mouse to click on stuff though, and that’s somewhat confusing.

To show off some really hands-free gaming, MSI demoed a game that required you to look at specific objects to score points. Unfortunately, it seemed like I didn’t quite do the setup properly, which resulted in the tracking not being terribly accurate.

More from Computex 2015

It’s quite possible some existing games will be able to take advantage of this — games such as Dota 2 or Starcraft 2 require constant map panning, and using your eyes to do this may be a much better solution than mousing to the edge of the screen. It’ll let you concentrate on using your mouse and keyboard to control your units.

Beside games, MSI also demoed a pretty nifty Windows unlock — just look at three different pictures in sequence and the login screen goes away.

MSI will officially launch the product after Computex, though it expects some design changes. MSI hasn’t yet finalized what the laptop will look like. There’s also no pricing, but it’s not likely to be cheap.

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If the Samsung Galaxy S4 rumors pan out, Samsung’s newest smartphone may let people interact with the screen using just their eyes.


Join CNET on Thursday, March 14 at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET for live coverage of the Samsung Galaxy S4 event

Eye-tracking uses the camera to lock onto the motion of a user’s peepers, following wherever they move. With it, the phone can perceive where the user is looking, and can respond to a set of behaviors, let’s say a very intentional movement to scroll a Web page up and down, or a long, purposeful blink to click.

If your eyes have reached the bottom of a page, eye-tracking software could automatically scroll you down the following paragraphs of text.

This type of technology — which had been researched for desktop computing long before it was conceived of for the smaller smartphone screen — has been demoed for a variety of actions: zooming in or out, pausing a video by looking away from a screen, and playing games.

One company, Umoove, has already posted a demo video on how different eye-tracking navigation could work (below).

This isn’t to say that this is the exact implementation that Samsung would use, if it were to integrate eye-tracking software at all, but it does help us visualize the pros, cons, and use cases of “perceptual computing” with this type of gesture-based software.

Software that’s hard to perfect

We’ll be the first to admit that weaving and bobbing your head to interact with the screen looks a little silly, but there are a few practical use cases, particularly if you’re the type of person who’s often busy with your hands. It’s also a potentially useful accessibility feature.

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From a business perspective, eye-tracking software also has interesting ramifications for advertising, potentially allowing companies to tailor ads based on the parts of a story or screen where people actually look.

However, there are also plenty of possible cons. Since the technology is still in its early days, commanding the screen with a come-hither look won’t always be accurate. Just think of the issues users have had with Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s S Voice assistants.

Movements could look awkward in public, and distractions could easily keep your orbs darting this way and that, interfering with the tracking software’s behavior. Battery life is also an issue, since the phone would have to be awake to keep an eye on you.

Just how likely is this?

We don’t have any insider information on this, but eye-tracking is just the kind of feature Samsung would include in its handset.

Why not? The Galaxy S3 has SmartStay, which, if you enable, keeps the screen from dimming if you look at it. An Android phone, the Galaxy S3 also includes rudimentary facial recognition to unlock the screen.

All that’s in addition to a long list of optional physical gestures that use sensors like the accelerometer to pan and zoom when you move the phone, and mute a call or song when you flip the device over.

For Samsung, a company all about staying ahead of the pack, being one of the first to use a feature like eye-tracking would be a big win — whether anyone really uses it or not.

“Innovation is quite difficult to achieve in these devices when you’re effectively using the same software platform as everyone else and the same underlying hardware,” Ovum analyst Tony Cripps said. “These investments are perceived as important in that they provide some kind of differentiation from rival devices in the market.”

A recent Bloomberg article reports that eye-scrolling (one of eye-tracking’s behavioral expressions) won’t make it into the Galaxy S4, but there’s a strong chance that future devices could feature it.

As more and more handset-makers look for ways to innovate, expect to see more visual gestures creep into a smartphone’s bag of tricks.

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At CNET, we look at so many cell phones and smartphones throughout the year that many of them tend to look the same after a while. Therefore, it’s easy to remember the ones that looked especially interesting. I’ve compiled a list of the most eye-catching phones we’ve seen this year, be they short stubby phones like the Kin One or the giant handset that is the Motorola Droid X.

They’re listed in no particular order. We’re sure we’ve missed a few, so let us know in the comments if there’s any phone that made you do a double take.

Eye-catching phones of 2010 (photos)

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