Feedback on view control in E:D

[Raffaele]

hi guys

i dont know if this the right place to put this in or if i would rather open a brand new thread. feel free to move it where it most makes sense to you.

After some troubles with my asmedia usb post, i managed to find another and afte ra whole afternoon of attempts, it seems i succede in having the eyex work. I mainy have used it for two games, Arma 3 and E:D.

In Arma 3 you have a fov slider and the eyex doesnt attempt to look beyond the frontal 45° arc, as it would be natural to be. Moreover, the POV snaps around as fast as my gaze so i dont have any delay. It feels very natural and i can use it on a whole gaming session without any discomfort.

Unfortunately the same doesnt happen with E:D. I have three issues with Eyex and E:D.

My first issue is that the tracking is slower than my eyes, so when i want to look at something and i am looking at it, the camera doesnt catch up with me istantaneusly, so that i try to adjust for it to get there and then it adjust to me and back and forth.

Moreover, since i am seeing things i am not supposed to, like the side monitors, i have the annoying and tiring sensation of dragging my POV around, as if i was moving windows around on my desktop.

The third is the control setting menu in the eye infinity is not helping. I dont know how to use it, what “dead zone” specifically refers to in this particular situation.

I just want that my “focus bubble” moves around to the place i look, in places where i am supposed to be able to see, without sliding to where my ears forefront and chin are supposed to face.

is is something that can be adjusted by settings?

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Last but not least, the infinity screen doesnt find any of my games, all the time, so i have to input the adress in my drives every time.

I hope to have been clear, and i just want to make cler that i want to be 100% constructive, so if you need any kinf of feedback let me know.

[Henrik [Tobii]]

In Arma 3 you have a fov slider and the eyex doesnt attempt to look beyond the frontal 45° arc, as it would be natural to be. Moreover, the POV snaps around as fast as my gaze so i dont have any delay. It feels very natural and i can use it on a whole gaming session without any discomfort.

Unfortunately the same doesnt happen with E:D. I have three issues with Eyex and E:D.

My first issue is that the tracking is slower than my eyes, so when i want to look at something and i am looking at it, the camera doesnt catch up with me istantaneusly, so that i try to adjust for it to get there and then it adjust to me and back and forth.

Moreover, since i am seeing things i am not supposed to, like the side monitors, i have the annoying and tiring sensation of dragging my POV around, as if i was moving windows around on my desktop.

Thank you for your feedback. Much appreciated.

There are many reasons for the difference in behavior between E:D and Arma3. I’ll try to give you a short answer but there’s more to it than you might think. (Wall of text incoming. Bear with me :))

ISE have two different implementations for controlling the view in games. In games where the player is located in a vehicle we’ve opted for what we call the “FreeView” implementation. The main advantages of this implementation is that your view centers on what you’re looking at and that you can freely rotate your view (within the confines of the game). This enables object tracking which is a clear advantage in “dog fight” games such as E:D since you’re able to “lock” your view onto targets that you’re tracking with your gaze. Being able to freely look around is also very powerful when the player is controlling a vehicle which exhibits inertia when turning. It’s obviously very cumbersome and inefficient to turn the whole vehicle just to look around.
One of the drawbacks is that it’s difficult to make it instantaneous in most games (it is however much more responsive in games such as Flight Simulator X) and that you most likely will need a “Center View”-button, especially if the game does not provide a clear visual cue of whats forwards/backwards (i.e. where your heading vector is pointing). This is one of the reasons as to why “FreeView” usually works very well in “simulator games” where the cockpit/cabin act as this visual cue.

We call the other version “ExtendedView” because it essentially does just that – it extends your view up to a specified number of degrees (the “FOV-slider”). The main advantage of this implementation is that looking to the center of the screen always translates to looking straight ahead (aligning your view vector with your heading vector). This is very important in first person games where the player very often lacks a clear visual cue of forwards/backwards and therefore almost certainly will end up disoriented when using FreeView. The implementation basically directly translates your gaze position on the screen to corresponding rotation of your view in game (e.g. looking at the very right edge of the screen translates to rotating the view to the maximum set degrees to the right). A drawback is that this doesn’t allow you to freely track objects but this is of less concern since you in an first person game rarely have to worry about inertia when looking around. You can spin on a dime and easily use your aim to track targets instead.

As you can see, both implementations have their strength and weaknesses. It’s all about identifying which implementation is the most suitable one for a specific game. It is of course also a matter of taste and in some cases (like Arma3) you might want to able to switch between the different implementations depending on if you’re in a vehicle or on foot. We’re currently looking at introducing such an user option.

TL;DR: There’s two versions of Infinite Screen. One is good for first person/third person games, the other one is more suited for vehicle games.

The third is the control setting menu in the eye infinity is not helping. I dont know how to use it, what “dead zone” specifically refers to in this particular situation.

We always knew it would be difficult to explain exactly what the settings sliders “actually do”. We hoped that showing the result as a grey scale gradient on a screen would be an intuitive visualisation for most users but a classic graph visualisation should probably also be available as an option.

I just want that my “focus bubble” moves around to the place i look, in places where i am supposed to be able to see, without sliding to where my ears forefront and chin are supposed to face.

is is something that can be adjusted by settings?

I don’t understand what you mean by “in places where i am supposed to be able to see, without sliding to where my ears forefront and chin are supposed to face” but if you want your view to be more responsive (also more unstable) then try something like:
Speed: 7 (the maximum rotational speed – i.e. when your looking at the edges of the screen)
Gradient: 3.5 (the “ketchup effect”-factor)
Dead zone: 0.01 (how far from the center of the screen the “ketchup effect” kicks in)

We’re also looking at making the experience in E:D more responsive. We’re using VJoy right now but we suspect (not verified) that E:D might do some kind of internal input smoothing on joysticks which contributes to the feeling of “dragging the view around”.

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