In a market where every company focuses upon developing products that can be sold to a large demographic, kudos should be given to SteelSeries for creating a device that caters specifically to one select group of people, and a group that is rising in prominence, too. The gaming peripherals manufacturer is hoping to help pro gamers improve their skills with the Sentry Eye Tracker, which as its title suggests tracks the eyes of the player in order to provide valuable feedback that can be utilized both by its user and by those watching it being implemented on live streams.
The Sentry Eye Tracker bears more than a passing resemblance to the PS4’s camera, with it being a slim box that sits neatly below or on top of your monitor. However, its specifically focuses upon the eyes of the user rather than full body motion control, with SteelSeries having collaborates with Tobii Tech in order to implement medical eye-tracking technology into a piece of hardware designed to register their movements, helping the player to look at the feedback it gives them in order to improve their game and also offering the possibility of motion control.
The Sentry connects to your monitor or laptop with USB 3.0, with it supporting screens of up to 27 inches. It utilizes an internal magnet in order to attach to your screen, which sounds like a small addition but considering that my PS4 camera and my Xbox One Kinect have each been taped to my TV (and even then they have a habit of falling off), it’s nice for a device such as this to finally release with a sustainable method of holding itself in place.
The Sentry is bundled with a copy of Assassin’s Creed Rogue, which is intended to show off the device’s functionality as a motion controller. This works by having your eyes (or eye, as the device is capable of registering only one of your peepers if you happen to have to wear an eye patch or something) control the game’s camera, an action which is initially weird but eventually feels somewhat natural, if not as intuitive as moving it around with the right thumbstick. It’s interesting, though not the hardware’s main application. That comes in the form of the player feedback it provides, which can be used by either prominent streamers looking to help their viewers by showing them exactly which parts of their monitors they look at during a game, or by those looking to improve by observing post-match statistics that its Sentry Game Analyzer provides.
The Game Analyzer, which is unfortunately only available for Dota 2 and StarCraft 2 at the time of writing, provides a detailed look at how much time you spend looking at different aspects of a game. This information is relayed to the user in an intricate breakdown at the end of a match, with it highlighting how many times during a game you looked at the minimap, your items, your Mana/HP bar and other such in-game information. The Sentry Game Analyzer also boasts a dropdown menu that helpfully allows you to take a look at specific facets of your match, including “Looks at region,” “Time since last look at minimap/enemy items,” and “Fixations per minute” which shows you how long you’re looking at the same thing. Pro gamers will know that they have to monitor multiple different aspects of a game at any given moment in order to ensure success, and this particular feature allows them to look back through stats regarding their eye movement and monitor how long they were observing different parts of their screen and processing information.
Streamers can also have their eye movement displayed as an overlay in their live streams, which appears as a ring that accurately shows which part of the screen the user is looking at to their viewers. This is particularly helpful for streamers looking to offer their viewers helpful tutorials, with the Eye Tracker enabling them to show their viewers where they should be focusing most of their attention on during a game. This is all made possible thanks to the Eye Tracker’s incredibly accurate tracking tech, which does its job superbly with pinpoint precision, and though I don’t wear glasses or contact lenses myself, I have been informed that the device also does a good job of tracking the eyes of those that do.
The SteelSeries Sentry Eye Tracker is appealing to a relatively small market, and it could certainly do with support for use with more games, but if the tech is eventually applied to the likes of League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and other heavily streamed games, we’re looking at a device that could prove to be a hugely useful tool for pro gamers and streamers alike. If you fit that bill, then I’d wager that it’s worth the $199.99 asking price, and that SteelSeries has introduced some new technology here that will be an excellent addition to a professional gaming setup.
