A fascinating concept to some an unworkable gimmick to others, the eye-tracking capabilities of the new Samsung Galaxy S4 have certainly garnered a lot of news coverage. The system, which uses the built-in camera to view and interpret eye movements, has been demonstrated doing two things: pausing a movie when the user looks away (Smart Pause), and scrolling the screen content when the user tilts and, erm, looks at it (Smart Scroll). But do these simple features suggest that we're about to enter an era of eye-controlled games?
Well, it depends. I've not yet been able to find out from Samsung whether the technology will be made available to developers – that's obviously going to be important. The other question is how sensitive it will be. The current S4 implementations are rather binary: the user is either looking at the screen or they're not. This might offer some functionality to game designers: it could augment a standard control system (perhaps as a hands-free pause system) or it may be fine for very simple one-input titles, like endless runners. But for anything more complicated, the system will need to be able to accurately and speedily track eye movement across the screen.
Nevertheless, game developers are keen to know more about Samsung's tech. "What would be interesting is if Samsung puts out APIs for an engine like Unity or Cocos2D so that we could retrofit this into games," says Ben Trewhella of Opposable Games. "Much like motion and gesture tracking, these new features bring in a lot of innovation but it can be hard for a developer if they're not made seamless to integrate. You can spend 20-30 percent of your development budget on trying to implant a new interface feature, when it needs to be two or three percent of your time."
Opposable is a small studio that specialises in multiplayer 'second screen' gaming – i.e. interactive experiences that use both a shared TV display and a tablet device for each participant. They're currently working on trading card and Advance Wars-style tactical titles, but also see the possibilities for impulsive multiplayer experiences. "Games that allow someone to just jump in and join a game are great - with eye tracking there's the potential to do a lot of very inclusive games where you may just walk past a screen, it recognises you're there, and suddenly you're in the game - it would mean that you could get four to eight player games very quickly on one screen - that's very interesting."
Harvey Smith was a producer at Electronic Arts but is now MD of cross-platform game technology company Marmalade. He too sees the potential of eye-tracking – and the requirements for a sensitive system. "The possibilities will depend on how precise it can be in tracking position across the whole screen," he says. "There are clearly opportunities for games to evolve using this technology, perhaps delegating certain functions like reloading a gun in an FPS, steering with a flick of the eyes in a racing game or camera control in a 3D adventure.
"For younger players simple games like 'peekaboo' with characters, or reading eye movement to create feedback could be really rewarding. Perhaps more valuable is outside of gameplay - by tracking user line of sight in real–time we can make games more reactive to what the user is focusing on – and by relaying that information back to the development studios it would help inform future design decisions."
Vitally too, the arrival of affordable, pervasive eye-tracking solutions could be great news to gamers with disabilities. "I've been predicting that gaze aware systems would go mainstream for ten years, and I'm glad it's started to happen," says Dr Mick Donegan, CEO of charity SpecialEffect which modifies gaming peripherals for disabled players. SpecialEffect has developed its own PC app, Alt Controller, which map keyboard controls to different areas of the screen so that they can be read by eye-tracking systems. In this way, it's possible to play to play titles like racing sim Dirt 3 with eye movement alone. The cameras supported, though, are specialist products that cost upwards of £3000.
"From what I've seen of the Samsung system, I'm not sure how accurate it will be," he says. "The features I've seen rely on fairly large movement of the eyes, whereas to play a game, particularly on a device as small as a Samsung, it will need quite a high level of accuracy. But it's a very encouraging direction for things to move in, whether that's just to enhance enjoyment of games or to allow people with severe disabilities to use the technology."
And obviously, Samsung isn't alone in exploring the consumer possibilities of eye tracking. Specialist technology company Tobii, which usually supplies its gaze interaction and eye control products in research and medical fields is working with Fujitsu on an eye-tracking tablet. It is also preparing to launch its first consumer product, the Tobii Rex, which aheres to your monitor and allows you to use eye-tracking to control any compatible application – developers just need to integrate some dedicated code into their software. At last week's ceBit exhibition, the company worked with Intel to specifically showcase the gaming applications.
Elsewhere, Donegan points to Eye Tribe a company set up by a group of PhD student from the University of Copenhagen. After securing a million euros in crowd funding, the group is now working on a low-cost eye-tracking controller for mobile devices, using just your inbuilt camera and no additional technology.
Whatever Samsung intends for its own use of eye-tracking in the Galaxy S4, this is another step toward mainstream physical controllers. From Kinect to Google Glass, the concepts of intuitive, highly accessible input are evolving. Gamers of course, always talk about how they'll always want joypads because of the precision of control offered: the huge decline in Kinect support has shown that neither developers or gamers were really impressed with the accuracy of the system.
But as Smith says, if we view this as augmentation rather than replacement of existing interfaces it gets interesting. Donegan talks about 'gaze awareness' - i.e. titles that simply know where you're looking – rather than 'gaze control', where your eyes become a controller. For example, in a first-person shooter, an enemy hiding behind an object may look out at the player, but then quickly get back in to cover when you glance at them. This has all sorts of creepy implications for survival horror titles.
Today, it might just be about looking away from the screen to pause Temple Run, tomorrow it could be an augmented reality ghost hunting game, using eye-tracking to place spooks just at your peripheral vision. You have been warned.
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