Inseye to Launch Eye-Tracking Accessory Lumi for MetaQuest2 and Quest3
TapTechNews June 23 news, Inseye company plans to launch an eye-tracking accessory named Lumi, which is compatible with MetaQuest2 and Quest3 headsets and costs $160 (TapTechNews note: currently about 1165 Chinese yuan), but the specific release time has not been announced yet.
Existing VR headsets with eye-tracking functions, such as AppleVisionPro and PlayStationVR2, all use infrared cameras combined with infrared LED illuminators to track eyes. The tracking process relies on computer vision algorithms to identify the position and size of the pupil by analyzing image frames.
Inseye Lumi's solution is quite different. It also uses infrared illuminators, but there is no camera, but instead uses an array of six simple and inexpensive photoelectric sensors, which can measure the intensity of infrared reflection on the user's eyes. Due to the slight difference in the intensity of infrared reflection on different parts of the eyes, Inseye's neural network can determine the exact position of the pupil according to the intensity information detected by the photoelectric sensors.
Inseye claims that this method has a power consumption of only one-fifth of the camera-type eye-tracking, can easily achieve a refresh rate of 1000 Hz, and the delay is less than 1 millisecond. In contrast, the refresh rate of camera-type eye-tracking is usually 120 Hz, and the processing delay requires dozens of milliseconds.
Such a high refresh rate and low delay mean that the gaze area in foveated rendering can be smaller, and applications can provide higher resolution in the gaze area, better performance, or a balance between the two.
However, Inseye's solution is slightly inferior in accuracy to the camera-type solution. Inseye claims that its accuracy is about 2 degrees, while the camera-type solution can reach less than 1 degree. This means it is not suitable for some gaze-tracking interfaces with very small elements, such as some application menus in visionOS. In addition, it cannot provide data on the degree of pupil dilation, but this function is also relatively rare in current application scenarios.
The $160 price is designed to allow Inseye Lumi to cover R & D costs and obtain reasonable profits. However, Inseye said that the cost of the photoelectric sensor and emitter itself is only about $10.
Lumi connects to the Quest headset via a USB-C port and a headphone jack, and supports USB-C adapter to facilitate users to charge the headset and connect audio devices while using the accessory.
It should be emphasized that Lumi is not a magic tool that can directly turn Quest3 into QuestPro2. Applications need to specifically integrate Inseye's SDK to use the eye-tracking function. Therefore, Lumi is mainly applicable to the PCVR field, and the open PC platform can make it easier for developers to integrate such accessories through standards such as OpenXR.
This eye-tracking scheme using photoelectric sensors may become the standard configuration of VR headsets in the future. If the effect is good, perhaps this technology can be seen in MetaQuest4 and may even become a way for future AR glasses to achieve eye-tracking.
Currently, Inseye Lumi has no definite release date, but users can pay a refundable deposit of $1 and purchase it at a discounted price of $100 after the product is launched (if it is launched).
Inseye also plans to provide prescription lenses supporting Lumi, as Lumi itself does not support wearing glasses and cannot be compatible with the existing Quest prescription lens plan.