Competitive gaming has become more and more prominent in recent years. And with competitive gaming earning recognition as a professional sport in 2013, that’s unlikely to change. Unfortunately there’s no standardized method of training for to-be professional gamers, but that’s about to change with the Sentry Eye Tracker.
Earlier this year, SteelSeries began a partnership with Tobii Technology, the foremost leader on the technology behind eye tracking. Together, they’ve brought to life the Sentry Eye Tracker; a brand new piece of hardware that is designed to track player eye movement across the screen.
When asked about the partnership, SteelSeries’ CTO Tino Soelberg had this to say,
“When you take [Tobii Technology’s] core functionality and apply the deep gaming expertise of SteelSeries, we think we are able to offer a product that is innovative and incredibly beneficial to gamers.”
But what sort of innovation and benefits can something like the Sentry Eye Tracker this really provide for gamers? Why would we need to track eye movement? Those answers are actually pretty straightforward. You may already be familiar with the term APM or Actions Per Minute. This term really became prevalent thanks to StarCraft and it is used to calculate how many actions a player can perform in one minute. This is a great way to measure just how accurate and responsive a gamer is and players who have a high APM tend to perform better than those who don’t.
APM measures our input into the game, but there’s another topic that needs measured, and that’s how quickly we can take in the information displayed on screen. This is measured in Fixations Per Minute, or FPM. FPM tracks how often the player moves their eyes around the screen as well as where they’re focusing. Combining Tobii Technology’s hardware and SteelSeries’ gaming know-how, the Sentry aims to be the gaming coach for every professional gamer out there.
But what if you’re not into professional gaming? Well thankfully SteelSeries has something planned for you as well. The Sentry Eye Tracker can do more than just simple tracking and data recording; it can be its own interface as well, using your eyes as an in-game controller to enhance gameplay. While this functionality is still in development, it’s unclear if it will be ready in time for the launch later this year.
Looking for more information on the Sentry Eye Tracker? Check out the SteelSeries website for more details.
