Eye Tracker implementations for RTS games?

[Andreas]

Hi all!

First post here, and unfortunately it’s gonna be a long one, but bear with me please, especially any Tobii/eye tracking game implementation devs reading this!
I only heard of Tobii and eye tracking very recently, but it completely hooked me and I think this is the future of 2D gaming/regular screen gaming, parallel to 3D/VR gaming!

Upon watching a few demonstrations for games I immediately saw the potential for eye tracking in RTS games, for instance StarCraft, C&C, Stellaris, and so on. My idea was that the mouse is basically replaced with eye tracking, meaning that the player makes selections and gives orders with the eyes instead of the mouse.

A few examples below demonstrate the idea further:
– To select a unit, look at it and press a button to select it
– To select multiple units, look at the ground next to the units, press and hold a button and then move your gaze across the screen to draw a selection box around the units
– To move units, look at the ground and click the button
– Look at another unit and click to attack it, defend it, etc.
– Look at a building and click to select it
– Look at a building and secondary-click to bring up a production menu; from this eye tracking and a click can build units etc.
– And so on

In terms of camera movement I suppose a regular mouse, keyboard or even analogue stick on a gamepad can work. Alternatively, Infinite Screen can be used to allow the player to shift the field of view around. Perhaps the game automatically moves the field of view so that it is centered around the point where the player looks, with a smooth and slow delay of course and constant refocussing in order to be fluid and not cause motion sickness.

In my mind this would revolutionize strategy gaming as many RTS games require extremely fast actions, and what is faster than the movement of the eye? This would also allow for RTS games to finally be playable on consoles to the same degree as on PC.

I don’t know if this is at all possible at present day, or if it might even be in development, but I just wanted to share my ideas! I have loads of other ideas for game implementations as well, but this is the most significant one in my opinion.

Cheers from Sweden
And thank you for making the world of gaming evolve!

(Ps. When is this coming to consoles? That would be awesome too!)

[Alex [Tobii]]

Hi!

We are definitely working on bringing eye tracking features to strategy games. So far we come up with the following features:
– Center@gaze / Bungee zoom https://tobii.github.io/UnitySDK/eyetracking-features#map-navigation
– Zoom at gaze – zoom towards your gaze instead of mouse pointer.
– Cast spell@gaze

Unfortunately, selecting units won’t work well since they are usually too small and grouped together.
In some cases it’s possible, like in Shadow Tactics where you can iterate enemy units in the gaze area by looking at them and pressing a button.

[Andreas]

Hi

That’s great news! A shame about the unit selection bit though. A workaround solution that came to mind would be that the game “draws” large “selection circles” around each unit or group of unit (automatically recognizing units as groups when they are proximal to each other) that allow for a larger area to gaze at in order to select units. Selecting specific units within groups will not work, but at least groups and isolated units can be selected. This might not be possible however?

[Author]

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