Oculus now owns an eye-tracking company
Google isn’t the only company trying to figure out eye-tracking for virtual reality — Oculus VR is on the case too. The Facebook-backed VR company has confirmed that it recently acquired Danish startup The Eye Tribe, a firm best known for creating software developer kits that bring gaze-based controls to smartphones, tablets and PCs. Now, that technology belongs to one of the highest profile VR headset makers on the market.
Although Oculus was happy to confirm the acquisition, mums the word on details: we don’t know how much the company was acquired for, what the Eye Tribe’s future is outside of Oculus or when we might see this technology in a future product. Still, the aim of the purchase seems obvious — The Eye Tribe has been working on a foveated rendering for VR, which increases VR performance by only rendering the part of the simulation the user is directly looking at. Either way, it’s a good purchase for Oculus: a casual glance at the VR landscape shows eye-tracking as the next big problem to solve. Knowing where a player is looking could increase immersion, reduce performance bottlenecks and even help prevent simulator sickness.
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