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www.techinasia.com 2015 00475.txt.txt

#Fove eye-tracking headset aims to shake up VR, launches on Kickstarter Update: Fove has reached its Kickstarter goal as of 6: 47 pm JST on Friday, May 22, just three days into its 45-day campaign. Oculus managed to raise US$400, 000 during its first 24 hours on Kickstarter, but it still exciting to see an Asian competitor hit its target so quickly. Forget the cheesy 80s movies and failed attempts of the 90s virtual reality (VR) is back, with current technology finally ready to match its science fiction-level ambition. The resurgence of virtual reality gizmos aimed at gadget buyers like you and me, in the form of head-mounted displays (HMDS is being led by Oculus VR. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign for its gaming-focused development kit, dubbed the Oculus Rift, in 2012. Its goal was to raise US$250, 000. Backers ended up pledging more than US$2. 4 million. Oculus, and the VR revolution the company appeared to be ushering in, has met its fair share of skeptics. Many were silenced last June, when social media behemoth Facebook finalized its acquisition of the company for a staggering US$2 billion. Even before Facebook surprise acquisition, Oculus had piqued (or, perhaps, re-piqued) consumer interest in virtual reality. Sony entered the budding space with the announcement of its Project Morpheus headset in March last year. Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg allegedly tested out Sony VR hardware, designed for its Playstation 4 console, a week before announcing his company intent to buy Oculus. Just a month after Morpheusunveiling and Facebook shock announcement, a silent competitor to both was setting up its office at Tokyo University Intellectual Backyard startup incubator. Fove named after ovea, the part of the human eye that gives us the sharp central vision necessary for tasks like reading, driving, and, of course, playing video games wants to revolutionize the resurgent VR platform by integrating advanced eye-tracking technology into its own headset. Today, after months of preparation, Fove is launching a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter seeking to raise US$250, 000. So how does eye tracking work and how can it complement the virtual reality experience? ove uses infrared light to illuminate your eye, regardless of eye color, Lochlainn Wilson, Fove CTO, tells Tech in Asia. he iris reflects the same light pretty much across all of humanity. There are little cameras looking at your eye, but theye not visible, and they track your eye movements. While headsets like Oculus and Morpheus display everything in the virtual environment in sharp focus imagine a wrap-around HDTV Fove eye-tracking technology recreates the depth of field that human eyes see naturally. For example, if a person holds his hand up to his face and focuses on his palm, everything behind the hand becomes blurry. This effect is achieved on Fove 2560×1440 display thanks to a graphics engine that adjusts its focus based on where a user is gazing in real time. The eye-tracking cameras are combined with an accelerometer for orientation sensing and head tracking, which allows a user to move their head to manipulate the 360-degree view while still controlling virtual interactions with their eyes. For gaming, specifically, eye tracking has many benefits. here a lot of potential for using your eyes in driving games, even something like flying around in the Iron man suit, Wilson says. ou could target enemies simply by looking at them. It hard to intuitively aim when you have a 2d cursor in a 3d space. Beyond boosting controls, Fove eye tracking allows for deeper interaction with in-game characters. ove opens a whole new word for content creation, especially when you can make eye contact with characters, Wilson adds. ow they will know if youe paying attention, and theyl also know where youe looking. That means that, in the future, Fove could get you virtually slapped for staring at a female character chest when she talking to you. Perverts youe been put on notice. Eyes on eye tracking The potential for eye tracking to enhance VR gaming hasn gone unnoticed. At last March Game Developer Conference in San francisco, Sony US-based Magic Lab research and development team showed off an external infrared camera that enables players to scan the environment using their eyes and target enemies simply by looking at them. Sensomotoric Instruments (SMI), a German tech firm that specializes in gaze and eye tracking, has designed an eye-tracking add-on for the latest Oculus development kit. The upgrade requires a client to send their headset to SMI for retrofitting and costs US$14 850 more than 42 times more expensive than the Oculus it attaches to (the latest iteration of the developer kit, DK2, costs US$350. Razer, a high-end gaming hardware maker with a cult following of hardcore gamers, recently announced its own VR headset, OSVR (the name stands for pen-Source Virtual reality. Razer CEO, speaking at the recent Consumer electronics Show (CES) in Las vegas, said that he hopes the headset will speed the development of the virtual reality platform by allowing developers to hack it as they please. Eye-tracking technology was named as one potential addition. Wilson isn intimidated by bigger, better-funded tech firms considering the integration of eye tracking with their home-cooked VR experience. ove is the amalgam of great technology, he says. o long as Oculus is not actually innovating its own hardware, the field is open. Nobody is doing what we are doing, at the price point we are aiming for. To be honest, without something like eye tracking, Oculus will be a nonstarter for serious gamers it a passive experience. Best of both worlds Wilson, an Australian, started working with HMDS in 2013 as a hobby. At the time, he was doing university research related to psychology. One project dealt with autistic people and eye contact. t very important for Fove to go beyond gaming, because it has the potential to change lives, he explains. e give disabled people a private space that they are in total control of so long as they have their eyes, or even one eye. Fove could be used as a medical HMD where surgeons use it for detailed camera work and can also interact with the system without requiring a nurse to do everything. There also interactive cinema, productivity for finance and security, virtual market research, dangerous situation simulation, and design studies. Gaming is just a start. The startup is currently working to provide headsets to schools for disabled children. In a heartwarming video the startup posted in December a disabled boy plays the piano at a Christmas concert using only his eyes. On the gaming front, Fove CEO, Yuka Kojima, brings expertise honed in the thick of that sector. She spent four years at Sony Computer Entertainment and then became a social gaming director at Japanese mobile gaming firm GREE, working directly on the hit title Driland, a card battle game that was earning the company US$26 million a month in 2012. apan is the best place for a hardware startup, Kojima tells Tech in Asia. here are huge companies making complicated electronics, and wee close to manufacturing centers in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere in Asia. Japanese hardware startups are rare, because theye seen as risky. I know how to monetize mobile games, so I want to do the same with a more complex, emotional experience. efore Sony, I thought games were just for children, she adds. ut now I see gaming as an important part of modern culture. I think people are interested increasingly in VR worlds and communicating with virtual characters. I want Fove to be the first to realize sensitive, nonverbal communication with such characters. Kickstarting Fove Though born in Tokyo, the startup has global ambition. Wilson says that hardware development will remain based in Japan but that business development will be moving to the United states. The focus for the next couple of months is Fove Kickstarter campaign. The arliest Birdlevel (limited to 200 backers) starts at US$349 just slightly more than the US$300 that Oculus charged for its most basic assembled developer kit when it debuted on the crowdfunding platform. For game developers, Fove is compatible with Unity, Unreal, and Cryengine, making it easy for them to port existing content to the device ecosystem. Backers also gain access to the Wear VR app store, thanks to a partnership that was made also public today. Fove secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Japanese angel investors last year and one possible exit option has appeared already. Fove became the first Japanese startup to be invited to Microsoft Ventureslondon accelerator, where Wilson and Kojima relocated from September until December last year. The pair are based currently out of the DMM. make hardware accelerator in Tokyo geek graceland, Akihabara. Many speculated that Fove invitation to the tech giant accelerator was priming it for acquisition, and thus, potential integration with the company Xbox One gaming console. Wilson left the possibility open, simply stating that he had o updates yet. e

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