Its premier feature —the eye-tracking —is a work in progress as well. Calibration of each eye requires staring at a series of dots placed in different locations within the field of view, and at the moment, it has to be done before each demo. (The team’s goal is to require calibration only once, and then the headset will store that data to be used across all applications.) And targeting objects, as I did during a dogfighting demo where I had to locate and shoot down enemy spacecraft by staring at them, still needs a bit of fine-tuning. Besides slightly loose targeting, the software sometimes couldn’t keep up with how fast I shifted my gaze.
Surprisingly, Fove says that its motivation for combining eye-tracking with virtual reality is to put folks in VR headsets on the same competitive level as people using a mouse and keyboard setup. Gesture and gamepad inputs are too slow to keep up, but with a headset that accurately reads your gaze, you could be as quick (or potentially faster) than someone playing on PC with a traditional setup.
It’s an ambitious project, and Fove’s headset specs match those aspirations. It’ll come with a Quad HD (2560x1140) display and a 100+ degree field of view, operate at 60fps (with a goal of 90fps), and is aiming to keep the accuracy of its eye tracking to less than a 0.2 degree margin of error. This VR visor will also demand a fair amount of horsepower from the PC you connect it to: its recommended specs for a system is one that has a discrete graphics card that can run “modern, graphics-intensive games” at 2560x1440 at 100fps or greater. Fove has also incorporated support for Unity, Unreal, and CryEngine content into its headset, in an effort to make it easier for developers to port over existing or completed projects.
Developer kits will begin shipping by Q3 of this year to developer partners; those who pledge at the $349 level and above on Kickstarter will see their development kits ship in May 2016, if Fove holds to its promised estimate. Alaina Yee is IGN’s tech editor and resident crow. You can catch her on Twitter at @morphingball.