How Tobii builds eye tracking that changes the gaming world

Stockholm-based Tobii is a 22-year-old company that is today the absolute world leader in eye tracking, who after helping Sony with eye tracking in PlayStation VR2, their name has been more visible than usual. This led us at Gamereactor to call gaming expert Thomas Papa to find out more about how the collaboration came about and how they see the gaming world in 2023, in general.

Gamereactor: Tell us about yourself and about Tobii.

Papa: My name is Thomas Papa, gaming expert here at Tobii, which was founded in 2001, and I work with implementation in various games and how our technology can improve and enhance the gaming experience. We are currently 600 employees spread over 13 offices around the world and we currently have the world's largest patent library in our field with over 750 international patents related to eye tracking. We provide our technology to a variety of industries such as research, education, healthcare, automotive and gaming. The Gaming division here at Tobii is the smallest of our various divisions and currently consists of 25 people, but our products are currently supported by more than 170 games and since 2014 this part of our business has grown every year.

What would you say is the most important thing about the type of eye tracking you develop?

Immersion. Immersion is the key to everything here and, in my opinion, there are plenty of games today where our technology can make you become part of the game itself or the game world in a way that is difficult to describe before you actually test it. Our technology allows in many ways for the game to know about you as a player, and being able to control the game camera with your eye movements or your head movements, for example, can of course make a big difference to immersion.

We have tested The Division 2 with Tobii Eye Tracking and it works really well.

Exactly. In that game, we have support for a feature called "Cover at Gaze" which means that the player seeks cover behind an object that he is looking at, and although it may sound inexact and arbitrary, it is the exact opposite. It simplifies gameplay, makes it more intuitive and improves immersion. For example, in Assassin's Creed Valhalla we have a system where you can loot boxes by looking at them, also something that players really appreciate. In F1 22, we have a system that makes the game's in-game interface invisible to improve the game's immersion and realism, but visible if you look where it is otherwise located. In Star Citizen we have a system where you choose your targets in space battles depending on where you look, and so on.

What about the world of sim-racing, racing and flying?

We are also present and strong there and are currently aiming to expand and improve our support for various racing titles, including Assetto Corsa. We are currently working with Alpine's esport team to give their drivers better opportunities to position their car before each curve and an evaluation tool that allows their esport coaches to use the eye tracking functionality to see if their drivers are looking at the right things during the actual driving. What we've noticed is that experienced professional drivers look towards the apex and certain markings or visual cues to confirm what they've already figured out or know, while uninitiated drivers use the same type of information to make certain specific choices. Both of these target groups can of course benefit a lot from Tobii's technology.

Here at Gamereactor, we've been keeping track of your progress in this sub-genre and since we have a dedicated sim-racing room with a full-sized motion rig, we'd like to try headtracking to make our rig's movements more consistent with the in-game graphics.

Absolutely, it's also one of those details that I think can improve realism and immersion and we will of course help you with that.

When it comes to PS VR2, your technology is really crucial to how good that headset is and how well the foveated rendering works. What happened when you were asked by Sony to be part of the PS VR2 production?

As I mentioned, we have 13 offices in different parts of the world, one of which is in Japan, and this is where Sony turned to early in the process of PS VR2 and it feels super fun for us to be part of that product.