Imagine if your avatar’s eyeballs inside the virtual world can also look at the same direction as your real eyeballs. With the realistic gazes, it will definitely make your avatar seems more natural and lively, rite? Since not many VR headsets have this kind of capability, perhaps you would like to build it by yourself using EyeTrackVR solution.
What is EyeTrackVR?
EyeTrackVR is an open source and affordable VR eye tracking solution that is easy to build. It is definitely useful for social VR games such as VRChat that involves a lot of social interactions.
This solution requires you to work with some hardware, software and 3D printable mounts as well. This kind of setup will allow you to attach the cameras, IR LEDs and microcontroller boards on your VR headset.
As additional info, EyeTrackVR uses the Open Protocol which are OSC (Open Sound Control) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocol to make it work.
How EyeTrackVR Tracks Your Eyeballs?
Well, interesting question, rite? In order to track the movement of your eyeballs, the solution uses an ESP32-based board together with a small camera module to track them.
When under the IR (infrared) illumination, your eye pupil will appear as a distinct black area which the camera can identify it immediately.
Next, the software will convert the camera’s view of the pupil into a gaze direction value. This valuable information can then be integrated with other software to be used accordingly.
Perhaps, this YouTube video tutorial can help you a lot to understand how it works. Especially the first 15 seconds of it…
What You Need to Know About This DIY Eye Tracking?
Since it is still at infancy stage or in active development phase, this software is not yet considered as final. So, please do not expect it to be full reliable and perfect. This is the same with its documentation.
But the single, most important thing to highlight is the ER emitters. You need to exercise extra caution when messing around with the IR emitters since they are dangerous. It can cause damage and harm to your eyes if it is handled wrongly or if you ignore the precautions.
Furthermore, IR emitters can be dangerous to your eyes once at a certain power level. Hence, you must ensure that you buy the linked ones or those that match the exact specifications.
Lastly…
With this affordable and low cost EyeTrackVR DIY eye tracking solution, you can now have more natural interactions with other avatars during your virtual hangout. Hence, you can look a lot more cooler than other avatars 🙂 For more info regarding EyeTrackVR, you can read it at:
- EyeTrackVR Docs
- EyeTrackVR on GitHub
- “EyeTrackVR: DIY Eye Tracking for VR Headsets” from Gillett News.
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