This is actually my biggest complaint with the Tobii - I use and play on Linux by preference. Not only does it not work on Linux natively, the tracker HAS to be initialized on a windows machine. Oddly enough, the hardware platform appears to also be used in Tobii's Pro lineup -- which does have Linux support.
@Falkor82 They don't really need to make a Linux port (which they have, as I've noted); just don't obfuscate the device. Expose it as an n-axis HID device with depth camera and let the community take it from there.
Thats certainly another good attribute to it. The subtle movement to the camera gives it a more crafted feeling, like someone is actually controlling a physical camera in the game world.
Your cinematic shots are BEAUTIFUL! A chance to make even a fraction myself, SOLD! And thank you for your continued contributions to the community, you rock!
@@ronniecole138 The heck yourself. How is this the first thing that you think about when someone says they're living in Taiwan? As another person who lives in Taiwan there are lots of reasons to live here, I'd definitely recommend reading more about it.
u wont regret it mate. have had a tobii since early arena commander days and have loved it even when times were rough during early Loreville bugapalooza era etc. now its super solid. happy for u man ur gunna love it!
Simply wonderful - stand by it, that intro was incredible! Fantastic cinematography. The Tobii 5 is great, but you've really turned that science into art with this one
i have the tobii 5 and it's genuinely amasing how good the separate eye&head tracking is. it not only gives me the ability to do high off boresight and separate head tracking, but it just immerses me into whatever im doing so so much more! genuinely one of my best investments
i have used the tobii for two years now. imo it ranks right up there with hotas/hosas in how much of a huge improvement it will lend to a typical star citizen player. i dont use it on foot, only when flying. its a huge boost to situational awareness and makes it way easier to keep track of targets buzzing about you. my suggested order of acquisition: voice attack > hotas > tobii > fancy new computer.
I've only been using it for a few months, but if I were to rack it's usefulness in sc compared to the video cam+opentrack option, it would have been a 0/10 until right after citizencon. There was some serious issues with centering loss in SC that wouldn't fix itself with the centering reset button. I think once Tobii became a "sponsor" it got a lot more attention, same thing with my VKB sticks, it no longer matters what usb port I plug them into SC recognizes them as the same stick, where as they would sometime get mixed up in the software. Not sure how you dealt woth the tobii calibration issue for 2 years, it was annoying having to reset it with my head tilted weirdly each time I left a menu or got back into a pilots seat.
This thing is totally worth the cost. Great addition. If you do pick one up, one of the most important things initially is to absolutely follow the instructions for physical mounting. Clean it properly, make sure it's attached to a perfectly flat surface, and let the adhesive set for a couple days before mounting. If you don't, you'll be plagued by all kinds of mounting issues that won't go away.
^^this, always ditch the crap factory adhesive unless they use 3M. Don't even have to wait days just clean surfaces with alcohol, let it dry then stick on and go. @@TheNefariousFox
I bought one a month ago and it's been incredible. Even the small quality of life things like being able to look around when scanning asteroids to see where you get radar pings is so helpful and makes the experience much more immersive.
The set up you have is important. I sit one meter away from the device because of the desk I have and my flight sticks set up, my TV is a 42 inch screen. The eye tracking will not work at that distance but the headtracking works really well.
Ive been waiting for a recwnt video on tobii 5. The out of the box settings were too jarring for me, but i think some of your tips will help. Thanks for this.
I've been using the Eye Tracker 5 since summer of '22, if I remember correctly. I simply can't imagine playing SC without it now. I don't use the actual eye tracking part, preferring to leave the head/eye to 100% head. And I also don't let it auto-lock via gaze, either, as I find that a bit annoying when there are multiple targets clustered up. Finally: no on FPS. At all. Not ever. Way too disorientating in my experience. The response to me would be, "Well why even use it?!" In flight, it's invaluable. Being able to quick glance around the canopy to see where the other ships are is incredibly useful.
I've also had mine for over 2 years now and I'm still very happy with it. I originally bought it specifically for Star Citizen and it has done EXACTLY what I hoped and performs amazing in it. However recently I decided to finally get into DCS & MSFS after picking up a throttle/regular rudder pedals to be able to effectively do regular flight sims. I read more mixed things about it being used in DCS but thankfully I waited until Tobi optimized a bit more over the last couple years. I definitely still run into some of the odd jitteryness when focusing in on gauges/switches but overall it has been an amazing experience in DCS and MSFS. I wear glasses and generally play in a super dark room and I used to have odd issues here and there with my track-ir plus just having to wear the sensor was somewhat obnoxious as I don't wear a headset or hat 100% of the time. The Tobi imo is easily the most efficient option on the market for head/eye tracking in games especially flight sims when it comes to versatility and ease of use. It's definitely still not the cheapest option out there but I've more than gotten my value out of it already and it's still giving me more value all the time
I'll probably pick one of these up, I've been interested in it for awhile, but not until SQ42 is closer to release. I don't want to buy a piece of tech to use in the future, only to have a new version out by the time I'm actually going to use it.
I can't play Star Citizen without my Tobii 5 now. It is just so useful and puts me even further behind the eys of my character. Improves situational awareness and tracking in dogfights and in ground combat. I play a lot of games in VR. This is the next best thing. Without question. I completely agree with Morph's assessment.
I got one myself shortly after your video. Personally I've completely disabled the eye tracking and gone fully into the head tracking myself. I've realised that I constantly dart between multiple readouts of my HUD and thus the cam always drifted off center, which really irritated me. Now, if I look at some MFD only with my eyes, my screen stays put and if I want to take a good look at something I just adjust my head. The great thing about the eye tracking in SC is that you can just adjust it to your preferences. And yes, not being able to use it now feels like a disability whenever I check into SC at a friend's place.
a few weeks ago a random guy i met doing seige of orison had the facial recog and voice matching i gotta say i was blown away and amazed to see it in action for once! it made me feel like i was conversing with someone irl and it matched up perfectly. if those features become a regular thing for ppl down the road omg the immersion gained :D i know we have the capabilites for it but its not commonly used by players yet. one day i hope
I have tobii5 for a month now and i love it. i also have vr but after a few houres i get tired. with tobii i also have the bonus of no pc performance loss compared to vr. i use is for race sims also 32/9 monitor (95cm wide )doesnt give any issuse for me also works up to 1200mm distance from screen. that said onley head tracking works to that extreme distance but without flaw
I picked up the Tobii Eye tracker 5 last year and it's been a great immersion add-on. Like Morph said, they reccomend the Eye tracker for upto 30-32" screens but will work with slightly wider screens. The "Head" tracking works with 74" wide displays (triple 28" monitors) However you must disable the gaze options in StarCitizen as the "Eye" tracking "gaze" will prevent the Tobii from functioning in StarCitizen if the game reports a wider screen than the Tobii was designed for. So disabling the Gaze fixes this limitation and I'm fine with just head tracking on. Those with 38" screens or less can still use Head and Eye tracking. Tobii Eye tracker is a great product. Would be even better if wider screen widths were supported for the "eye" tracking alone.
I picked up the Tobi Eye Tracker 5 recently and I love it. It's a little weird at first, I was wondering why my character kept staring at the words above an elevator door, until I realized I was reading them. Very nice for flight and immersive for FPS as well
I was definitely skeptical, but I needed a head or eye tracker device to get up to a more competitive level in PvP. You just can't effectively use a light fighter if you don't have good spatial awareness. You're right, it's uncannily natural to use, it felt like riding an old, familiar bike after less than an hour of use. Absolutely magical. I'm now looking forward to using this in other games! I do wish that it was better integrated in FPS modes -- I think that when you aim down sights, the sights should snap up to where your gaze is pointed. Actually, with that one tweak, I think the Tobii would become meta in FPS as well as ship combat.
Thank you. Thank you. Totally immersive. I was a loyal Track IR user but hated the headgear. Game changer. Code was very handy. Keep up the great work.
LOVE my Tobii! Been trying to really dial it in so I am going to copy your settings and work from there as your gameplay and cinematic shots are *chef's kiss*
I'd like one of these, especially considering it doesn't require wearing anything on my head, but one thing I learned from using the SC's built-in tracking, is that I rarely stay focused on the screen, due to needing to communicate with my family members and pets while playing, as well as the side monitors.
Thanks for the video! I'll dig into this again once I start playing SC more regularly. I bought a Tobii a little over a year ago and played around with it a little but never dug too deeply into the settings to figure out things like how to get it to stop making my in-game view fly upward every time I blinked. Hopefully your configurations here will help me sort that out in my future endeavors, but either way, great video.
For anyone interested it works flawlessly with my 48" C1 too. Only thing the set up was a bit finicky as I had to look at places while calibrating where there was no dot. Like a bit under the dot or further out towards the edge of the screen, which was a bit counter intuitive. But after that it works flawlessly. And I sit around a meter away from the sensor most of the time.
For those people who are on the fence whether to get it or not and if it is something for you: You can try out headtracking in Star Citizen with any webcam, not precisely the same as a Tobii I imagine, but you can get a feel for it
Using OpenTrack (open source) you can get most of the functionality for a fraction of the cost. Works in more games too (and on Linux, which Tobii does not support even though their professional products do have Linux support) The most important part is a good webcam, which for accurate tracking means high refresh rate (most webcams are only 30fps, which works, but more is apparently smoother) and probably good low light visibility too (unless you like gaming in a well lit room). Of course, more fiddling to get it all set up (though there's good tutorials out there), and no eye tracking.
A really solid breakdown of a surprisingly decent product. About two years ago I never would have imagined I'd be flying around Star Citizen with dual joysticks and an Eye Tracker, but I was able to purchase them both within the last two months and now similarly to you I can't play Star Citizen without the Eye Tracker. Flying with it active just enhances the experience that much more.
Causes of Concern. Increased IR exposure does put you at increased risk of cataracts. Cataracts are pretty common (68% of people over 80 have them in the US), and they occur when the lens of the eye gets cloudy. IR is believed to contribute to their formation if the lens of the eye absorbs the IR light and heats up.
Morphologis, Always great to hear updates on this incredible tech! I'll still have to wait as I'm using a 120" screen sitting around 8 feet away. I think that screen size goes WAY over spec :) Still, keep updating us on it and maybe someday I'll be getting one :) vgv
Thanks for the video! I‘ve got my Tobii about 2 years ago and it has become an absolute essential part of playing SC (and a couple of other games …). To me, it is a „must have“ and I‘ve recommended it to some friends, with the promise to buy it off them, if they don’t like it… and I have not had to buy any of them yet … I‘ve tried some VR games but had issues with the VR gear (especially, if I need to access the keyboard / streamdeck), so to me, the Tobii is the best of both worlds … almost like VR, but without any of the drawbacks.
@Morphologis This is some amazing video editing! The fading in and out between scenes combined with the chosen music makes the video look really slick. You make Star Citizen look so amazing.
Iv had it for a couple of years and its become one of those things I take for granted as part of the immersion. Its amazing. I was annoyed in the beginning, because my view was very erratic, but setting the eye tracking to 0, fixed that. Apparently I have rather erratic eye movement. I also turn off tracking in menus, interaction and Mobiglass. I turn on tracking in FPS. Thats it..everything else is default. Its actually a really great help on smaller & none-wide screens as it expands your field of view, because you can look around :)
it makes tracking targets in dogfights so much easier. the radar display wasn't always as intuitive to me, especially on ships that don't have the holographic radar display. it was a lot easier to lose track of ships as they jousted past me, and you could forget pre-nosing. a great QoL improvement.
the vantage I see with it is that one of the things that turns me off on playing a lot of simulator games is the set up process. connecting and organizing all the cables, making sure the tracker is in a good position and well calibrated, and all that. so the idea of just ditching one peripheral for something that just tracks your face directly is huge help.
I bought a Tobii a couple of weeks ago and can't recommend it enough. I use trackir and Quest 2 for SC and DCS but using the Tobii with no cables is next level. Implementation in SC is perfect with the view changing slightly with eye movement not just head movement as you glance at MFD screens in your cockpit. It is expensive but soo worth it.
I’ve also had one for the past couple of years and really enjoyed it. It really adds to the immersion! I’ve always had this issue with it however where the screen is pitched down when I look to the side even though I’m not pitching my head down. I’ve been in contact with support and they called it cross talk. I have to reduce the pitch sensitivity and fiddle with the center stabilization and that gets rid of most of it. I would love for it to be fixed though. I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it, so I feel like I might belong to a minority here!
Been using Track IR for years all through playing the ArmA series and i cant recommend trackers enough. I dont mind wearing something and the accuracy is fantastic when im setup.
If you're thinking about getting one - Do it!!! Can confirm all points. I wear glasses in a pitch black on a 49" super Ultra wide and it's absolutely flawless! Really does take immersion to the next level and truly is a game changer for making it feel natural!
I also bought Gladiators and the Tobii. I disabled eyetracking completely. But the headtracking is literally a gamechanger, especially with an ultrawidescreen monitor.
The only thing keeping the Tobii from being perfect is the lack of regular camera, and an optional usb extension cord. It is an amazing accessory and in my opinion one of the fist peripherals to get if you love Star Citizen, even before a joystick. Their customer service is excellent and even after my first one died they sent a full replacement quickly and at no charge.
You mentioned leaning to look for landing, but with the tobii i can (in most ships) lean in the seat enough to look behind me from the seat. Very hand to be able to see the doo onto the brodge of your ship
OK you got me... Edit 5 months later: I bought one and DID NOT like it. I used it for DCS, the problem was it wouldn't hold perfectly still. Constant movement artifact. Yes I tried ALL the settings, I got on the discord told them my issue to no avail. Ended up reselling it. Just go track IR.
Great review! I use mine for Elite Dangerous, DCS, star citizen, and a few first-person shooters. I have to say it is a must, especially for simulation games.
I have had an eyetracker 4C(I think, the 4C looks a lot like the 5) I bought it for Arma and Elite: Dangerous and its been absolutely amazing. Hardly even notice that Im using it anymore. It just blended into my setup. Also having windows hello on my desktop is great. I dont know where the progress on the project is but there was an effort to get the eyetracker working on linux
My wife bought me an Tobii ET5 for luminalia (im blessed!).. and this video is so recent, and by my favorite SC RU-vidr!.. thanks edit: WHAT AN INTRO!! damn, it is so good
How amazing the game is with Tobi has always made me hope for full VR support. I know theres at least one dev who's gung ho about getting it in, but can't see it happening any time even remotely soon, if at all. Even the slapdash modded in support we can kinda sorta do now is a mind blowing step up in immersiveness (well maybe not now... have not checked for a while to see if recent patches have completely broken it again, would not be surprised in the least).
If you can spare the cash and want immersion without having a need to wear peripherals; I highly recommend one! I have glasses with blue light filters and have 0 problems, no problems with the need for decent lighting, it does really work intuitive, the only two downsides I can think of are: 1 personal settings are a must! For I have lateral adjustments turned off, I DO use it during ADS (only turns into a problem with sniping for me) and rely mostly on head movement, but once you've tuned them to your preferences OMG, amazing! But that does lead me to point nr 2 after decent sessions of mostly playing Star Citizen, I immediately miss it when I (re)turn to a game that doesn't support it or not as much or when it's poorly implemented. It makes me look like a crazy person when I sit at my desk jerking my head from side to side trying to get situational awareness (or so I've heard)
I've been using my TrackIR 5 for a bit over a year now, won't play without it... I have been avoiding using it during FPS because of the lack of aiming... until I watched this and realized what ADS was... thank you Morph, i feel like an idiot 🤣
I really love Tobii. I've been using it for almost a year now. I used trackIR before and I have to admit that trackIR is much more responsive with less latency. Tobii can be a bit jittery sometimes depending on lighting where as trackIR was pretty solid under all light conditions I experience. But the eye tracking it game changing and not having to be plugged into the PC is soooo nice! So I put up with the latency in favor of the comfort and versitility.
Thanks a lot for highlighting your settings. I've had the Tobii for awhile now and can't play SC without it. I did however have a strange conflict with FarmingSim22. If I used it in FS22 then it wouldn't work in SC and I'd have to uninstall and set it all back up again. I went back and forth with Tobii customer support but we were never able to find a solution other than not using it in FS22. Really weird.
Well, now my wallet is even more sad after watching this video and finally decided to pull the pin on this. Years I've been delaying this...but I think the time is now! That's Morph for all your high quality videos and Star Citizen content.
Nice vid, Morph. Appreciate the follow up review. Word of warning: I just got mine a few weeks ago and the flex mount did NOT come with velcro, but adhesive tape instead. I made the mistake of putting it too far back under my curved monitor and i couldn't flex the tobii to it's max angle. I had to forcefully rip the mount off hoping it wouldn't break, remove the tape, and place my own velcro strips on to reattach it more optimally. Tracker itself is fantastic, though.
*Some* sort of head-tracking is absolutely essential for any sort of sim IMO. I've been using trackir since before SC was even a thing and I absolutely love it. Since I always play with a headset I have the reflectors on my headset and have been fine with it. A friend has tobii and I need to test it one of these days, I wonder if the latency will be a killer for me, trackir has no latency at all and I'm used to that so any latency at all might be very annoying.
The one thing reviewers don't show is how it actually works in practice. I would like to see a video of the person and the screen in the same shot to see how the physical movement affects the camera movement.
I like it for just head tracking only using eyes to control targeting which is the most impressive feature. Would be really cool to have eye controlled weapon gimbals.
I haven't used it much but my main problem is that I only use a laptop, FYI it works with a laptop. The eye tracker comes with a flat mounting plate, I placed my mounting plate just below my screen and I can always close my laptop, the eye tracker itself needs to be dismounted but it can be left plugged in, it's also recommended to be turn off when you dismount the eye tracker. The rest of the problems, in my opinion, are the same as any other computer. Frankly I'm looking forward to doing may things with my eye tracker.
I like my Tobii eye tracker. The only thing I don't like and has nothing to do with the Tobii eye tracker are the settings in SC. I just don't have the time to sit there and adjust every single setting. I just needed a RU-vidr to do it, and I made tweaks to fit my preferences.
Here is a neat trick you can try with the Tobii, or with TrackIR - try using it with one eye closed! Do it in the cockpit and move your head around a bit - the result is surprising (though in the end not practically useful, sadly)
I can also recommend it very much. It's the most immersive thing for star citizen. Don't regret buying it for a second. I tried out different free options with webcam tracking but this is on another level.
Envy. Was going g to buy a torii 5 for Christmas but as my pc blow up on Halloween and 2 months of schizophrenia and a month of new parts only to find out the motherboard blew out. Now in the wait to get paided on rhe first to get the last few parts a build my first ever pc. So torii thrown to the side for some time.shrugs glad to see it running in game
I picked one up a year or so ago and I have got to say it is very easy to set up and get running with the only setting I changed was to turn in on in game . then turn it off for mobiglass and FPS but in the ship I love it just looking around. the first time I used it I was in a sabre and the target ship flow straight passed me I just moved forward and looked over my shoulder and out the side window over the wings , without thinking and my brain through I was looking behind myself but Im still looking at the screen in front of me its so cool and works great. but the off (/) is great when in QT and you just wasnt to have a drink or eat or get up and have a walk or even chat to someone in your room LOL . along with the rest / recentre I use (#) which on the UK keyboard is the key above left Shift and left of the Enter
Looking at the Tobii ET5 at the base of my monitor bezel right now. :) Seriously, once you start using it and get used to it in SC, it'll feel weird to turn it off while in a Pilot seat. There's been a couple times I forgot I had toggled it off(I do that when focusing on one of my other monitors), and moved my eye's to get the view to shift a bit and when it didn't move I felt confused.
Just wish they'd put them in the CIG store so I could use store credit on them. Have a TrackIR5 currently and this really looks like the way to go forward.
I personally will live and die with my track ir 5 but the Tobii is an undeniably impressive and convenient piece of kit. Thanks for the great vids Morphologis and good luck out in the verse!
Tobii lets you lock targets by looking at them. And I don't have to wear a doofy emitter on my head. Every person in my org that were die hard Track IR fans and tried the Tobii never went back.
I just started getting into Star Citizen and just found out about the Tobii few days ago. My main concern buying any 2-year-old piece of tech is when the next Tobii upgrade will come out. If a new version Tobii 6 is coming in this next year, I would much rather wait for w.e improvements are coming. It seems super cool and if I knew for sure this one will be the only one out for a while I would just purchase. Don't currently have much time to play so I'm in no rush.
It's interesting. I tried a lot of tracking devices, except Tobii. But I'm sure, best tracker now it's VR helmet, or VR helmet with eyes tracking. Unfortunately SC working already with VR but with many actions before for start. Price for Tobii still crazy high especially for possibility use like tracking device your phone or web-cam for face tracker build in game already.
Ive been sold on the Tobii eyetracker for years now, the problem is I need a new PC, monitors, keyboard AND joysticks all before spending on the Tobii. I'd bet im not the only person in this sort of situation where we'd really like one but it's basically at the bottom of the tier list for hardware/upgrade pickups.
I had great fun with it for the time I used it, but my main problem is my room setup. My desk is freestanding in the middle of the room, and on the wall behind it is the TV, which often catches my eye. I would find frequently when using Tobii, it would do some funky things when I look over my monitor at the TV. As well, I run an ultrawide (16:5 for life!), which isn't really supported by Tobii either.
I've been using the Tobii Eyetracker 5 for a couple of years now, with a 48" LG C1 about 100 cm away. I find it works great, though occasionally between game sessions it'll turn off and I'll need to disconnect/reconnect it to USB, which wakes it up. For the settings, I find I need to turn the sensitivity down a bit. I also set it to respond only to my head movements, not my eye movements, and not to automatically re-center. I have centering and toggle bound to keys, and if I need to look away from the screen and then look back, I don't want it to have moved its center of reference and for me to have to re-center.
This devise was pushed really hard this year by a lot of SC content creators, which can make it seem more marketing than real value. However, I can say that I did pick one up this year and it’s amazing. Well worth the cost for the added functionality and immersion.
I use the odyssey ark with it (55"), not much of an issue there either, btw. I've got Virpils and I still think the tobii was the best purchase for SC to this day even after 2 years as well. I will add, that I don't like using it in FPS, and I don't use the eye tracking (only head tracking) when flying. Though my eyes technically still can help me lock onto stuff.
