HTC is showing a demo in which users pilot a plane with Hotas while using the view to activate some buttons in the cockpit.
UPGRADE:
7Invensun, which is in charge of the accessory for eye tracking Pimax, has issued a statement in which they share that the new Vive Pro Eye HTC uses its software for rendering foveated, technology that, as we know, allows to improve performance. The Chinese company has been collaborating with HTC since 2015, forming part of its Vive X acceleration program and launching devkits for Vive, which has led them to “develop the new generation of foveated Variable Rate Shading (VRS) rendering” implemented by NVIDIA’s Turing architecture. Pro Eye therefore combines Tobii sensors with 7Invensun technology in this case.
ORIGINAL NEWS (08/01/2019):
After the presentation at the CES of the new viewer with eye tracking HTC, Tobii he has made an announcement today in the confirm that finally the leading manufacturer of virtual reality viewers that they talked about in October last year is HTC, so Live Eye it will become the first visor to hit the market with its integrated eye tracking technology.
“HTC is one of the most influential companies in the VR industry and this integration firmly establishes eye-tracking as a core VR technology. It also shows that Tobii is delivering on its promise to create better devices and better user experiences by adding eye tracking to the world’s leading VR devices, ” he says Henrik Eskilsson, CEO of Tobii.
Tobii and HTC are offering Pro Eye demos at CES in order to show how this technology is able to achieve better devices and experiences. Some of the media like VRFocus that have been able to test the new device, claim that the calibration is done in just 30 seconds and that the tracking works really well, although the demo they are showing does not seem to use the foveated rendering, since it is based on the interaction with the controls of an airplane cabin. For our part, the correct functioning of this technology does not surprise us, since the development kits already gave a very solid experience.
Demo they are doing at the CES, which consists of a cabin of an airplane
in which we interact through the view with the different buttons.
From what we see on the viewer’s website, Pro Eye has the same features as the Pro, with the exception of the integration of eye tracking and the USB-C 3.0 cable (VirtualLink), that is, it is compatible with SteamVR Tracking 2.0, it has AMOLED screens of 1440×1600 at 90 Hz and fresnel lenses that provide 110º of FOV.
Vive Pro Eye is scheduled to go on sale in the second quarter of this year for a price that they have not yet communicated, although we have as a reference the price of€ 879 corresponding to only the Vive Pro visor.
