Valve Shows Off Eye-Tracking, Biometrics At GDC

[Dekstar]

During GDC there was a 'Biofeedback in Gameplay' talk. Valve's experimental psychologist Mike Ambinder displayed the ways Valve are looking at using our own bodies to significantly enhance their games, and not just in a gimmicky way either. Biometrics is shown after the jump, so click through to see the entire post.[br]

Eye Tracking

Valve showed off what a piece of $10,000 eye-tracking hardware can do when hooked up to Portal 2. The player would control the general view of the character the same way (mouse and keyboard/game-pad), but actual aiming of the reticule would be handled by where you were looking. Ambinder noted, "The eye tracker is used to extract eye's X Y position. This data is updated at 60hz, before being fed back into the game engine."[br]The 60hz here seems pretty vital, as usually in an FPS, the eye can be darting about pretty quickly, so I suppose the hardware estimates the eye's position allowing for smooth aiming. There is a video below to properly show how this works in Portal 2, though I can see this giving a huge advantage to people who play competitive games like Counter-Strike: Source.[br]

[br]Read more on costs, NPC interaction and L4D2 using biometrics

Biometrics

Moving back a bit from the high-cost range, Valve experimented with many ways to monitor people's heart-rate and skin conductivity (sweat, basically), from heartbeat-measuring mice, to "a mouse that senses skin conductance, it's easy to use, pretty cool."[br]

In the end though, Valve decided on a cheap ($10) set of two metal contacts on a strip that you can attach with a piece of tape, or bandage. The current between them (which varies with stress levels) is measured and sent via USB to your PC. The video is below.​

[br]

[br]

Mike suggested many applications for stress feedback, such as sensing when team-mates are in trouble in co-operative games (like if you're being swarmed by tanks in Left 4 Dead), or even NPCs in single-player games who "know how you're feeling - Hey Mike, why are you so sad?"[br]Mainly, Left 4 Dead's AI director was shown adjusting enemy spawns, weapon drops, and health packs depending on if a player is bored, or stressed. Another use of it that Mike talked about was "Watching the arousal patterns of competitive players--just knowing if the competitors were aroused--could be interesting"[br]I'm certainly aroused right now, but what do you think? Would you splash out $10 or even more for these kinds of experiences? Do you think they would even add enough to games to be more than a mere gimmick? Let us know by leaving a comment.​

 

[Anthraxxx]

Link fail.

 

[Animontius]

It is so interesting to see Valve looking into new ways of interacting with games. From that video, it does look like just a gimmicky kind of thing, when tacked onto a game like Portal 2, but if a game were built from the ground up to use eye tracking technology, there could potentially be a lot of innovation. Of course, with a $10,000 price tag, it's hard to imagine development focused primarily on the technology being feasible at this point, but surely Valve must have some things in mind to be exploring in that direction. I can't think of any other developer doing it.

 

[Dekstar]

Link fail.

We're having problems with embedding youtube videos at the moment, bear with us.

EDIT: Should be fixed now on both the main page and the comments.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

And they should be fixed in a few seconds, you can view them on the front page at the moment instead. This is seriously impressive stuff, and I would have faith Valve would properly integrate these features into a game rather than use them for accessory mini-games or gimmicks. The amount of information this provides could really be used as a core gameplay feature which dynamically feeds back.

I also love the fact that the Valve psychologist is really involved. He was mentioned a few years back and dropped into conversation in Gabe's interviews about biometrics but now he's out there presenting at GDC. This guy knows his stuff!

 

[Anthraxxx]

The biometric data seems like an interesting way to enhance gameplay based on how stressed a player is during a given situation. For example, if they had biometric data for Portal 2, they could have Glados say things in response to how stressed you seem to be when doing a difficult task.

 

[YouKnow]

Gonna be staring at foreheads all day in Counter Strike.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I have a friend who has such sweaty hands that it's almost like he's forgotten to dry them after washing them. I would imagine even at his most relaxed the game would think he's got severe hypertension, pause it and recommend he visits his GP. Dr Newell says stop.

 

[leib10]

I used to do a lot of research with eye tracking a couple of years ago in the Texas Tech Psychology Department.

 

[Barnz]

I used to do a lot of research with eye tracking a couple of years ago in the Texas Tech Psychology Department.

then Gabe sneaked into the department, and stole your entire research?

 

[ríomhaire]

Anyone else notice how the quote buttons are screwed up?