Facebook and Oculus latest buy, The Eye Tribe.
The startup has developed a $99 eye tracking device developer kits for computers and software for gaze based interfaces.
The Eye Tribe has also developed foveated rendering technology, that lets VR systems save computational power by only generating perfect graphics where you’re looking. Essentially it creates a focal point that moves with your eyes. This means that future headsets could display more complex scenes at higher frame rates.
A whole class of headsets are starting to use eye-tracking for foveated rendering, as well as letting you teleport around a location, or show the movement of your eyes on an avatar to make it more life-like. an example would be auto scrolled of text while reading or pausing a video.
Meantime, an eye-tracking VR headset startup called Fove has raised $11 million, while SensoMotoric Instruments has brought eye-tracking to avatars in Altspace’s social VR construct.
Google recently bought an eye-tracking startup too called Eyefluence.
The Eye Tribe was developed out of research by the founders at IT University Of Copenhagen back in 2009. The company says the ITU Gaze Tracker they helped create has become the most popular open source eye tracking software.
It's still unclear what oculus and facebook plan to do with this technology, though it has potential applications for identity verification for security, immersive games, and a wide range of applications that let you navigate by looking rather than using your fingers.
Do you think gaze based software is going to be a key component to VR?
Source:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/28/the-eye-tribe-oculus/
