5 ms·
> But it does put an enormous amount of pressure on the eye tracking. As far as I can tell so far, the role of precise 2D control has been shifted to the eyes.
by russellbeattie 3y ago
> But it does put an enormous amount of pressure on the eye tracking. As far as I can tell so far, the role of precise 2D control has been shifted to the eyes.
I've been researching eye tracking for my own project for the past year. I have a Tobii eye tracker which is probably the best eye tracking device for consumers currently (or the only one really). It's much more accurate than trying to repurpose a webcam.
The problem with eye tracking in general is what's called the "midas touch" problem. Everything you look at is potentially a target. If you were to simply connect your mouse pointer to your gaze, for example, any sort of hover effect on a web page would be activated simply by glancing at it. [1]
Additionally, our eyes are constantly making small movements call saccades [2]. If you track eye movement perfectly, the target will wobble all over the screen like mad. The ways to alleviate this are by expanding the target visually so that the small movements are contained within a "bubble" or by delaying the targeting slightly so the movements can be smoothed out. But this naturally causes inaccuracy and latency. [3] Even then, you can easily get a headache from the effort of trying to fixate your eyes on a small target (trust me). Though Apple is making an effort to predict eye movements to give the user the impression of lower latency and improve accuracy, it's an imperfect solution. Simply put, gazing as an interface will always suffer from latency and unnatural physical effort. Until computers can read our minds, that isn't going to change.
Apple decided to incorporate desktop and mobile apps into the device, so it seems this was really their only choice, as they need the equivalent of a pointer or finger to activate on-screen elements. They could do this with hand tracking, but then there's the issue of accuracy as well as clicking, tapping, dragging or swiping - plus the effort of holding your arms up for extended periods.
I think it's odd that they decided that voice should not be part of the UI. My preference would be hand tracking a virtual mouse/trackpad (smaller and more familiar movements) plus a simple, "tap" or "swipe" spoken aloud, with the current system for "quiet" operation. But Apple is Apple, and they insist on one way to do things. They have a video of using Safari and it doesn't look particularly efficient/practical to me [4].
But who knows - I haven't tried it yet, maybe Apple's engineers nailed it. I have my doubts.
1. https://uxdesign.cc/the-midas-touch-effect-the-most-unknown-phenomenon-in-ux-design-36827204edd https://uxdesign.cc/the-midas-touch-effect-the-most-unknown-...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
3. https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/210245345-How-to-set-up-Tobii-Ghost https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/210245345-How-to-se...
4. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10279/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10279/
- ketzo 3y agoFrom reading/listening to reports of people who were able to demo the device, I think Apple may have nailed it, or come close. Everyone I've seen has absolutely raved about how accurate and intuitive the eye tracking + hand gesture feels.
- beoberha 3y agoI just went to echo this. Most of the reviews I’ve watched or read have raved about the eye tracking, regardless of if the reviewer was a fan of VR in general. It feels really cool that we might finally have a new computing paradigm. There is so much potential here and I can’t wait to see where things go.
- russellbeattie 3y agoNo one has used it for an extended period of time. You don't get a headache right away, but after a while, you feel it.
- Karunamon 3y agoEntirely serious question: is this something that can be trained? That is, after a long enough time of use and strengthening of the appropriate muscles and neural pathways, the headaches and such go away?
- russellbeattie 3y agoI think for some people, it won't be a problem. Much the same way some people have no issues spending hours using VR goggles without nausea. There are many people with accessibility issues who manage it, for example, and geeks who just like the idea of living in the future. In my experience, your eyes just get tired, even after you get used to it. I think unless Apple has really added some sort of magic, it will be an issue for most people to use Vision Pro for anything but passive activities, or with a physical trackpad.
- 3y ago