Gamer leaves Sony behind to bring eye-tracking to VR

Bloomberg

Virtual reality is on the cusp of becoming mainstream, but one startup in Japan is betting the technology won’t really succeed unless it cracks one critical piece of the puzzle: human eyeballs.
Fove Inc. is introducing the world’s first commercially available VR goggles equipped with tiny infrared cameras to follow eye movements. By tracking human irises, the gadget aims to reduce motion sickness, improve graphics performance and enhance social experiences by making virtual eye-contact possible, says Yuka Kojima, Fove’s founder and chief executive officer.
“We want to be the company that figures out VR’s unsolved problems,” Kojima said. “The immediate goal for now is to get as many headsets into the hands of developers as possible.”
While virtual reality can transport a user to a different world, eye-tracking offers a deeper experience because the eyes betray intent, reactions and a plethora of other emotional signals. For example, someone playing basketball in a video game could trick an opponent with a no-look pass or a game could surprise a player by introducing a threat outside their field of vision.
Kojima, 29, is convinced the technology will become commonplace in VR devices. That also explains why others are getting into the game, from Eyefluence, backed by LeapPad founder Jim Marggraff, to Eye Tribe, which makes a desktop eye-tracker for $200. SensoMotoric Instruments and Tobii are also exploring VR applications. Qualcomm Inc. earlier this month announced a reference design for an eye-tracking headset that uses its Snapdragon chip.
Kojima founded her startup in May 2014, soon after Facebook unveiled its $2 billion acquisition of VR headset maker Oculus. Fove ran a Kickstarter campaign, raising $500,000, and eventually got $13 million in financing from investors including Samsung Electronics Co., game maker Colopl Inc., electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology Co. and Taizo Son, the younger brother of SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son.
An early version of Fove’s eye-tracking VR goggles will be available to developers and enthusiasts for pre-order on Nov. 2, and the headset will cost about the same as Facebook’s $600 Oculus, Kojima said. She contends that her startup’s technology will help distinguish it from the first crop of rival headsets from Oculus, Sony Corp. and HTC Corp. Kojima, a former game producer at Sony, believes she’s one to two years ahead of the competition.
“I expect all the high-end headset companies to be assessing the benefits of eye tracking for next-generation VR headsets,” said Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games research at IHS Markit.