Odyssey and Tobii Eye Tracker

[Straker]

I originally started another thread about this although specifically targeting Head Tracking. The core problem affects both eye and head tracking the same way, so they are the same issue.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/how-are-headtracking-users-managing-on-foot-aiming.580389/

We've had 6 larger updates now and this problem still persists. It's very disappointing because it isn't a matter of a bug but instead the whole thing is majorly broken and can only be rectified by switching off tracking when on-foot.

If they aren't going to fix it, can they at least provide a way to switch tracking off automatically when on-foot, just like they do currently with SRV Turret Mode. This will save us having to remember to manually switch it off and on again using a key bind, which is often difficult when under attack or annoying when getting in and out of your ship or SRV to change suits etc.

It's just terrible that after EDO being so long in development and after 6 updates this feature is still completely broken!

 

[WB-24]

It doesn’t look like a bug to me, just an unwanted side effect of having Head Track and Eye Track both

Hello Cmdrs !

Are there Cmdrs using the Tobii Eye Tracker with Odyssey? I personally love it. And turning my head while doing on foot exploration to enjoy the landscape is awesome .

However there's a flaw with Odyssey as the reticle moves along with the camera making it impossible to aim while the Tobii is online.

Do we know if it's going to be fixed ?

Cheers !

Edit : Link to the Issue Tracker for what it's worth https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/37997

OK before you all shoot me let me first just state that this is just my personal opinion and I know not everyone will agree with it, it's not a lecture and there is no absolute truth. Oh and this is a game.

I'm not convinced that this is even a bug and that we should expect FDEV to fix it, it's just not what we as gamers have learned to expect.
If you think about it, if you move your eyes when in a space helmet the HUD is not going to be useful to you; the HUD is projected onto the inside of the visor, not the eyeball. Same applies to gun aiming; if you don't sight with your weapon properly you're going to miss. This "shoot-from-the-hip-and-hit-every-target-regardless-of-what-you're-looking-at" expectation is not compatible with the Elite Dangerous concept of space simulation. Therefore personally I find the Tobii to be a really immersive addition to gameplay. Eye tracking I find to be too difficult to use but Head tracking with Tobii works really well and enhances my experience of the game. I play ED because I want reasonably realistic simulation. If I wanted kill-em-all FPS I'd play COD.
Also, frankly there are some pretty significant bugs in the game that I'd rather they fixed first.

o7 CMDR's.

 

[MikeMart]

It's not only the HUD and shooting things. Interactions also are messed up.

Let me put you an exemple : if you're salvaging stuff on a planet, wandering, looking around and you stumble upon a wreck...your reticle won't show where your arc cutter is aiming, it's displaced.

I haven't played in a while so you are making me doubting but I think this issue is not only with eye tracking but with head tracking too.

If it's not asking too much cause I'm very curious about it and I can't check for myself right now, please be so kind to try on foot gameplay only with head tracking and tell me if the reticle points towards where you're aiming (arc cutter or salvaging items which are the finest things to do I guess) or if it's displaced, even a little.

Thanks

Edit : if I'm not mistaken people with TrackIR have the same issue with head tracking only. I remember doing on foot exploration and turning my head would send the HUD the opposite direction so definitely an immersion breaker (there's still the option of hiding the HUD which is nice but you lose interactions)

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

Hey everyone, a quick question: Im looking at the Tobii 4C or 5 tracker, but the screensize restrictions is a problem.
I have a 34" 21:9 monitor - and would need to mount it on TOP of the monitor.

Is it a no go?

 

[MikeMart]

Hey everyone, a quick question: Im looking at the Tobii 4C or 5 tracker, but the screensize restrictions is a problem.
I have a 34" 21:9 monitor - and would need to mount it on TOP of the monitor.

Is it a no go?

I think it's fine. I have mine mounted on a 21:9 at the bottom. The mount is a piece of plastic velcroed to some stickers you put on your screen and the device is attached to the mount by magnets. It's quite versatile i don't think you should have any trouble (Tobii 5)

 

[MikeMart]

Added my contribution on Issue Tracker.

Hopefully, it gets fixed considering the lack of VR support when on foot.

I noticed Tobii acknowledged this too: https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020709197-Camera-misalignment-in-Elite-Dangerous-Odyssey

Oh I had missed it. That's really good news actually. Odyssey is also heavily promoted on Tobii website so they should fix it...fingers crossed.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Hey everyone, a quick question: Im looking at the Tobii 4C or 5 tracker, but the screensize restrictions is a problem.
I have a 34" 21:9 monitor - and would need to mount it on TOP of the monitor.

Is it a no go?

I also think it should work.

 

[Athlon-uk]

I bought a Chinese track ir 5 variant from Amazon, but it uses the trackir chips. All the downloaded software from trackir works perfectly and even displays a genuine chip serial code. Works perfectly with my 32in widescreen monitor. Didn’t realise how much it would improve the flight side of the game, I’m well impressed

 

[Pville_Piper]

It's just terrible that after EDO being so long in development and after 6 updates this feature is still completely broken!

Not At Launch ™

 

[WB-24]

It's not only the HUD and shooting things. Interactions also are messed up.

Let me put you an exemple : if you're salvaging stuff on a planet, wandering, looking around and you stumble upon a wreck...your reticle won't show where your arc cutter is aiming, it's displaced.

I haven't played in a while so you are making me doubting but I think this issue is not only with eye tracking but with head tracking too.

If it's not asking too much cause I'm very curious about it and I can't check for myself right now, please be so kind to try on foot gameplay only with head tracking and tell me if the reticle points towards where you're aiming (arc cutter or salvaging items which are the finest things to do I guess) or if it's displaced, even a little.

Thanks

Edit : if I'm not mistaken people with TrackIR have the same issue with head tracking only. I remember doing on foot exploration and turning my head would send the HUD the opposite direction so definitely an immersion breaker (there's still the option of hiding the HUD which is nice but you lose interactions)

MikeMart you make a good point. I tried your usecase out and it is indeed unusable. I still think calling it a bug is a stretch. One fix they could do might be to always lock the target to where your eyes are looking.

 

[WB-24]

Hey everyone, a quick question: Im looking at the Tobii 4C or 5 tracker, but the screensize restrictions is a problem.
I have a 34" 21:9 monitor - and would need to mount it on TOP of the monitor.

Is it a no go?

I have a Samsung Odyssey G7 31.5inch Curved and it works great.

 

[TNTDany]

I have a Samsung Odyssey G7 31.5inch Curved and it works great.

I'm eyeing that monitor, could you report on what's been your experience with Elite, what about other games like FPS's?
I've played in flat monitors all my life and dabble a bit in video-editing sometimes, do you think the curve might get in the way...?

 

[WB-24]

I'm eyeing that monitor, could you report on what's been your experience with Elite, what about other games like FPS's?
I've played in flat monitors all my life and dabble a bit in video-editing sometimes, do you think the curve might get in the way...?

The only games I play are Elite Dangerous (Horizons and now Odyssey), F1 2020/2021, Assetto Corsetta Competizione and Quake Live and I can report for these it's totally brilliant, the best monitor I've ever had. The size means a huge FOV and the radius makes this feel natural. With Tobii ,Elite Dangerous and F1 have an extra level of immersion. I also do some Video Editing and Music (Ableton); for standard Windows apps (e.g. Word and Excel) the curve radius takes a little getting used to but the extra real-estate makes it all worthwhile. I'm using a 3080 card so it's fast and hi res. For Elite Dangerous I'm running Ultra graphics settings throughout and it looks great. I switch between a work laptop and the G7 every day and the curve is just fine. Highly recommended.

 

[Straker]

It doesn’t look like a bug to me, just an unwanted side effect of having Head Track and Eye Track both

I get what you're saying, ie the HUD will move with eye-tracking, however the HUD will NOT move with head-tracking, because one system is tracking the eyes and one is tracking the head. However you still need to ask yourself whether the whole thing is currently usable for anything requiring aiming (ie selection or firing), which it is currently not because you need a system that is going to reliably indicate that you are pointing at something and that it will hit it.

For example, in real-life, if I point a gun at a point on a wall and then either move my head or my eyes only, when I pull the trigger then it will still fire at that point on the wall. Currently in-game, there is no way to reliably tell what you are aiming at and that when you fire it will hit that point.

I would not describe this as a bug, I would describe it as a non-functional design which needs to either [1] be re-thought out, or [2] disabled when on-foot just like the SRV Turret Mode is. They could at least implement option [2] temporarily until they re-design it, which could perhaps be complex. I would encourage them to go for Option 2 as this won't take much to implement and it would have a great return on investment (although I think it would be fairer for everyone if this was optional).

 

[WB-24]

I get what you're saying, ie the HUD will move with eye-tracking, however the HUD will NOT move with head-tracking, because one system is tracking the eyes and one is tracking the head. However you still need to ask yourself whether the whole thing is currently usable for anything requiring aiming (ie selection or firing), which it is currently not because you need a system that is going to reliably indicate that you are pointing at something and that it will hit it.

For example, in real-life, if I point a gun at a point on a wall and then either move my head or my eyes only, when I pull the trigger then it will still fire at that point on the wall. Currently in-game, there is no way to reliably tell what you are aiming at and that when you fire it will hit that point.

I would not describe this as a bug, I would describe it as a non-functional design which needs to either [1] be re-thought out, or [2] disabled when on-foot just like the SRV Turret Mode is. They could at least implement option [2] temporarily until they re-design it, which could perhaps be complex. I would encourage them to go for Option 2 as this won't take much to implement and it would have a great return on investment (although I think it would be fairer for everyone if this was optional).

Yup agreed

 

[TNTDany]

The only games I play are Elite Dangerous (Horizons and now Odyssey), F1 2020/2021, Assetto Corsetta Competizione and Quake Live and I can report for these it's totally brilliant, the best monitor I've ever had. The size means a huge FOV and the radius makes this feel natural. With Tobii ,Elite Dangerous and F1 have an extra level of immersion. I also do some Video Editing and Music (Ableton); for standard Windows apps (e.g. Word and Excel) the curve radius takes a little getting used to but the extra real-estate makes it all worthwhile. I'm using a 3080 card so it's fast and hi res. For Elite Dangerous I'm running Ultra graphics settings throughout and it looks great. I switch between a work laptop and the G7 every day and the curve is just fine. Highly recommended.

Oh I like what I'm reading... Your gaming tastes almost mimic my own with Quake being the exception, bit too fast for this slow chap.
While most of the time goes to Elite I also used to be into race sims (race sim gear just takes to much space and the missus isn't having none of that) and still do dabble in FPS. ARMA or DayZ occasionally.
Thing is I'm still waiting on the GPU that will be able to make use of the monitor to the fullest without feeling I'm missing out. Hopefully a 3070 will be enough.
Thanks very much for the input, well appreciated. o7

 

[Sapient6]

It doesn’t look like a bug to me, just an unwanted side effect of having Head Track and Eye Track both


OK before you all shoot me let me first just state that this is just my personal opinion and I know not everyone will agree with it, it's not a lecture and there is no absolute truth. Oh and this is a game.

I'm not convinced that this is even a bug and that we should expect FDEV to fix it, it's just not what we as gamers have learned to expect.
If you think about it, if you move your eyes when in a space helmet the HUD is not going to be useful to you; the HUD is projected onto the inside of the visor, not the eyeball. Same applies to gun aiming; if you don't sight with your weapon properly you're going to miss. This "shoot-from-the-hip-and-hit-every-target-regardless-of-what-you're-looking-at" expectation is not compatible with the Elite Dangerous concept of space simulation. Therefore personally I find the Tobii to be a really immersive addition to gameplay. Eye tracking I find to be too difficult to use but Head tracking with Tobii works really well and enhances my experience of the game. I play ED because I want reasonably realistic simulation. If I wanted kill-em-all FPS I'd play COD.
Also, frankly there are some pretty significant bugs in the game that I'd rather they fixed first.

o7 CMDR's.

Up front disclaimer: I don't have a head or eye tracker. I've been watching this thread because if this becomes functional on foot I will buy one because I miss looking around in game (VR).

Reply:
I don't think this "realism" and "sim" argument holds any water at all. First of all, because in real life people can hold a gun, aim, shoot, and hit targets. All the while they have heads and eyeballs that allow them to look around, and yet that does not making aiming impossible (provided they look center). Everything I've read on this problem indicates that for reliable aiming the tracking needs to be turned off entirely. If that's true, if looking center with tracking turned on still leads to unreliable aiming, then this is broken--not a realistic simulation.

Second of all: the HUD is clearly NOT projected on the interior of the vizor. I know this because when I enter a pressurized environment and my helmet is removed, I can still see the HUD. Yes, yes, videogame handwave. I agree. But the moment you videogame handwave something away, you have absolutely got to drop it from your Simulating Reality list (the game is inconsistent about the what/how of the HUD, making it impossible to support "not a bug due to simulation" because it's impossible to tell WHAT the simulation even is).

 

[space voyager]

As this seems to be a lot more affordable version than VR, how do the two compare? Is this just a cheaper substitute or does head/eye tracking have any advantages?

 

[MikeMart]

As this seems to be a lot more affordable version than VR, how do the two compare? Is this just a cheaper substitute or does head/eye tracking have any advantages?

I used to play a lot in VR. Never bothered to try Odyssey though as I don't want to remove the headset when on foot nor playing with a virtual flat screen. I was doubtful about head/eye tracking. But in the end it's a great addition. It's not VR but it sure does the job for you to look around a bit and feel more immersed in the world. I definitely recommend it.

 

[Raptoyd]

I know thread is dated but has there been any news of any kind related to this issue? I did see the link above where Tobii has acknowledged the problem over a year ago then updated 2 months ago with a hot key to disable. Would be nice to use if it worked properly as the eye tracking is pretty accurate.