Though eye-tracking is considered important for the next generation of virtual reality (VR) technology, as it allows for techniques such as foveated rendering to be incorporated, so far eye-tracking has not been included in most commercially available VR headsets. That might be about to change as Tobii, an eye-tracking company has signed an agreement with a leading Vr headset manufacturer.
The agreement includes the Tobii EyeChip and licenses for Tobiii’s VR4 system design, intellectual property and software. So far Tobii have not released details on which VR manufacturer the agreement is with.
“We have made great efforts in adapting our world-leading eye-tracking technology for VR together with key customers and partners and it’s of course very exciting to be able to announce this agreement. It is an important milestone for Tobii to establish eye tracking as a foundational VR technology,” said Henrik Eskilsson, CEO of Tobii.
Tobii has declined to provide information about potential sales volumes for the technology, but is expecting to begin delivery in 2019.
The company is expecting that the market for VR headsets will continue to grow, citing estimates made by IDC, which shows the number of VR headsets sold will amount to over 4million units in 2018, growing to approximately 30 million by 2022. The company believes that many of these headsets will incorporate eye-tracking.
Tobii has previously released an eye-tracking development kit for the HTC Vive, and the HTC Vive was the headset that Tobii used to showcase its new technology developments during the 2018 Games Development Conference (GDC) earlier this year.
The company has also partnered with Qualcomm, with Qualcomm showcasing its Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR reference design, demonstrating the design at GDC, which incorporated Tobii’s technology.
For future coverage on Tobii and eye-tracking use in VR and augmented reality (AR), keep checking back with VRFocus.
Listed features for the title include:
You’ll have no doubt read about this partnership elsewhere on 
The next demo offered by Tobii centred upon menu navigation; removing the need to point and a middle click when selecting options in menus. No longer is it a case of click on a timeline, drag, release, but simply look at where on the timeline you want to skip a video to and click, with surprising precision. It’s a small yet welcome additional benefit of eye-tracking in VR – and potentially augmented reality (AR), too.
As the name implies, Qualcomm’s standalone headset isn’t designed to be a consumer offering from the company. Rather a design that OEM’s can utilise to create their own headsets, much in the same way Microsoft did with Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
With a dual camera system on the front, the inside-out tracking seemed to work reasonably well. It was a shame there wasn’t a massive amount of space to wander around in, yet stepping backwards and forwards was completed without any latency and thankfully no walls were bumped into. To test this and the controller an on-rails demo took place inside a space ship manned by robots. After a quick sweep around the hanger it was time to shoot some bugs. This proved to be somewhat haphazard as the controller was fairly compact, so the headset cameras tended to lose sight of the device. This is the reason Windows Mixed Reality headset controllers have such a big ring, helping keep the controllers in view.
