The upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset uses eye-tracking from the specialist group Tobii.
Tobii himself confirmed the news in a press release today. This follows a February 2022 announcement that the company was “negotiating” with Sony to be integrated into the new headset.
PSVR 2 – which has no release date yet – is expected to use eye-tracking for a variety of uses, including foveated rendering. This refers to a technique that follows the user’s gaze and then completely displays only the exact center of where they are looking. Areas of peripheral view are not fully rendered — a process intended to be unnoticeable to the user — reducing the overall demand for the system powering the VR experience.
In other words, this could help PS5 VR games look and feel better, though we’ve yet to see the feature in action.
Tobii has been developing eye tracking hardware for years already integrated into other VR headsets. For example, in 2018 the company developed a standalone VR reference design with eye-tracking together with Qualcomm. In 2019, Tobii technology was integrated into the HTC Vive Pro Eye. More recently, it was integrated into the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition and the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye.
Tobii says it expects the deal to represent “more than 10%” of its revenue by 2022.
While we still don’t know exactly when PSVR 2 will launch, reports point to a release for the device in early 2023, and today’s announcement suggests Sony may just be assembling all the necessary components to mass-produce the device. This would be in line with a report by prominent supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who noted that PSVR 2 would begin mass production in H2 2022, speculating that this would mean a launch in Q1 2023. As of today, it is H2 2022.
You can follow everything we currently know about PSVR 2 here.