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HTC Vive announced two new headsets at CES 2019, one of which was the Vive Pro Eye. While details were at a minimum, there was one prominent feature announced, and that’s integrated eye tracking. While this isn’t necessarily new to the HTC Vive, eye tracking is now a core feature with full, official support.
That adds a new and exciting layer of possibility to HTC’s Vive Pro Eye. Tracking a user’s eyes adds a new tool for developers to use in HTC Vive experiences down the road, and more importantly enables foveated rendering, a technique that prioritizes what a user is looking at. Everything else is rendered at a lower resolution to save on performance. The effect is unnoticeable because peripheral vision is less precise.
The Vive Pro Eye can be either wired or wireless. During our demo using Vive Sync (a meeting and collaboration app made for businesses), HTC had two headsets available. One was completely wireless, and the other plugged into a PC. If you look at the headset, you’ll notice it has two front facing cameras, so it likely uses similar tracking to that of the HTC Vive Pro. The controllers used appeared to be the standard HTC Vive wireless controllers.
For the most part, though, the Vive Pro Eye looks exactly like the Vive Pro, sporting a navy blue and black colorway with the same “ergonomic” design. You’ll feel no distinct difference between the two when you put them on. Since it has the same exact specs as the Vive Pro, don’t expect a vastly different experience.
As we jumped into our first demo, the Vive Pro Eye walked us through a brief setup where you adjust your IPD (interpupillary distance or the distance between your pupils) and then use your eyes to follow a small red dot that appears sporadically in different locations on the screen. The use of eye tracking within Vive Sync seemed minimal, but we were able to see the real movements of other user’s eyes during our virtual meeting.
The results? Better visuals, hands-free gaming, and more intuitive experiences
MLB Home Run Derby used eye tracking in a more unique way, letting us navigate the menus without a controller. That was especially interesting since the only accessory MLB Home Run Derby came with was a baseball bat, and we can foresee the use of more hands-free VR experiences.
The last demo we saw was BMW’s M Virtual Experience, and it demonstrated how businesses can track where users look and use real-time analytics to understand how they interact with their product. It wasn’t the most exciting demo was saw at the conference — In fact, it’s a little creepy — but seeing the difference made by foveated rendering was impressive.
You might notice that only one of the experiences we tried was a game – MLB Home Run Derby – and a simple one, at that. That doesn’t seem to be an oversight by HTC. The Vive Pro Eye left us feeling it’s geared towards business and commercial use, not gamers. That could change as we hear more about the headset in the coming months and it prepares for launch in the second quarter of 2019. In any case, its integrated eye tracking could prove to be a game changer for Vive headsets in the future.
The Vive Eye Pro will give us visuals that demand less power, more hands-free gaming and software, and more intuitive experiences. Check out everything announced during the HTC Vive press conference.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.