This time, it's official.
In February, we talked about the possibility of Sony partnering with Tobii – a company that develops products for attention computing and eye tracking – to implement the latter in PlayStation VR2. It's now official: Tobii announced its tech will be used in the new VR headset.
"PlayStation VR2 establishes a new baseline for immersive virtual reality (VR) entertainment and will enable millions of users across the world to experience the power of eye tracking," said Anand Srivatsa, Tobii CEO. "Our partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is continued validation of Tobii's world-leading technology capabilities to deliver cutting-edge solutions at mass-market scale."
The company says it will receive upfront revenue as a part of this deal starting in 2022 and revenue from this deal is expected to represent more than 10% of Tobii's revenue in 2022.
PS VR2 is Sony's upcoming headset that will use foveated rendering, which reduces the image quality in the peripheral vision to decrease the rendering workload. Its GPU frametime is expected to be up to 3.6X faster with both rendering and eye tracking. There is no release date yet, but the headset will support over 20 "major" titles at launch. You can see the Resident Evil: Village PS VR2 trailer below.
Tobii's eye and head tracking cameras use a custom infrared optical sensor and are supported by several Ubisoft titles, including Far Cry 6, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and For Honor. Games that support Tobii's technology can use it for aiming and selecting items in accordance with where the player is looking.
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