Feedback on the Tobii integration

[B1MBLE]

Tobii Eye Tracker is a real game-changer for both ETS2 and ATS. Tobii 5 cost me a whole lot of money but, in my opinion, it has been worth every penny!

[jeefAD]

@Jonas_Tobii

Question: For head tracking only, is it possibly to mount Tobii to the top of the center monitor?

Some aspects of Tobii documentation make a distinction between eye/head tracking re: mounting/installation requirements (e.g.: larger monitors can be used with head tracking only).

It's fairly common with simulators to have the center monitor positioned very close to the steering wheel base, which makes the bottom mount nature of Tobii a challenge.

[Jonas_Tobii]

@Jonas_Tobii

Question: For head tracking only, is it possibly to mount Tobii to the top of the center monitor?

Some aspects of Tobii documentation make a distinction between eye/head tracking re: mounting/installation requirements (e.g.: larger monitors can be used with head tracking only).

It's fairly common with simulators to have the center monitor positioned very close to the steering wheel base, which makes the bottom mount nature of Tobii a challenge.

Unfortunately it's not possible to mount on top. The facial structure and eyelashes tends to block the view of your eyes and thereby not track you very well. So this is today not supported.
We're aware of the limitations that it gives and have tried to educate a bit about this both in our ETS2/ATS article but also in this positing guide.
https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/article ... ye-tracker

[Underscore_101_]

I waited for Jonas to reply since you asked the question directly to him, but,....

Though the device may not have the right tools to mount it at the top of a monitor for a good angle, and the arguments from Jonas are perfectly valid,... if you can make something that allow you to place it there and get it at a good enough angle, doesn't have to be perfect, but near to it, it will track your HEAD just like it's mounted at the bottom where they advice you to mount it.

DISCLAIMER: I have eye tracking turned OFF, so I only use HEAD tracking, therefor I have not tested if it will track your eyes.
I only use it for ETS2 and ATS, I DON'T use it for other windows applications and/or games.
Your setup is of course not the same as mine, so my findings are not a guarantee it will work for you

[jeefAD]

@Underscore_101_ I'm only interested in head tracking as well, but I'm not likely to take the gamble if the product isn't designed for such orientation. The behavior could change and possibly cease working entirely in future. Cheers for the info tho! Glad it's working for you.

[Underscore_101_]

Totally agree with you there, but tbh, imho i think Tobii are underselling their product with all possibilities it has, but limit the support because not every option is possible with head and eye tracking, so they won't support options that work perfectly fine for just head tracking.
Or that's it's just too complicated to list everything that's possible without causing confusion, which leads to complaints, etc,...
I think that so long the infra red sensors can distinguish your head from it's surroundings it should work perfectly fine wherever it's mounted, with the exception of distance (too near or too far) perhaps.

As for your worry if it could cease working, even if it does, where you mount it has no influence on that, unless you mount it in such a way that you have to destroy it to mount somewhere else.
Mine is just stuck with Pritt roller glue on the underside on the small side of a plank (kinda thing, left over from some furniture) that's standing upright about 10 cm in front of my monitor.
I should add again that i just use head tracking, just in case someone reads this, but not what's been posted before

[Jonas_Tobii]

I waited for Jonas to reply since you asked the question directly to him, but,....

Though the device may not have the right tools to mount it at the top of a monitor for a good angle, and the arguments from Jonas are perfectly valid,... if you can make something that allow you to place it there and get it at a good enough angle, doesn't have to be perfect, but near to it, it will track your HEAD just like it's mounted at the bottom where they advice you to mount it.

DISCLAIMER: I have eye tracking turned OFF, so I only use HEAD tracking, therefor I have not tested if it will track your eyes.
I only use it for ETS2 and ATS, I DON'T use it for other windows applications and/or games.
Your setup is of course not the same as mine, so my findings are not a guarantee it will work for you

Thanks for sharing. This does indeed work for some, maybe even many. I haven't set it up myself but from what I hear most people who do this are happy with it. But it would limit you to head tracking only. The Eye Tracker is however made to work on as many people as possible. Between 95-97% of the population is trackable. If we would start to market different ways to mount it, turning off the eye tracking and only doing head tracking it would get quite confusing. We try to highlight cool setups in our community and let people talk about how their experience is. It's quite common in our Discord to chat about monitor sizes and how users have their setup. But we cannot guarantee the experience for anyone outside of our recommendations. It's not tested and we're trying to create more and better features in games. If a new cool feature pops up that uses eye tracking and someone mounted it to just use head tracking it's not a great experience.

We definitely encourage anyone to explore and test different ways if it doesn't work below the monitor. But it will most likely come with a drawback. I remember a guy who made a race or a flight rig in his living room using a projection screen. He somehow managed to line up the setup with a huge screen and mount the tracker in a custom mount in the perfect spot to get it to work. Really awesome for him. But very hard to help others to do the same. The amount of time he spent to get all of that right

@Underscore_101_ I'm only interested in head tracking as well, but I'm not likely to take the gamble if the product isn't designed for such orientation. The behavior could change and possibly cease working entirely in future. Cheers for the info tho! Glad it's working for you.

If you don't mind having one mount on top and potentially having one on the bottom later on as well. It's fine to move it around but might need a recalibration or so. The Eye Tracker 5 comes with a mounting kit included. Two mounting plates and one flex mount. If you would need more later on you can purchase another kit from our website or Amazon. So whatever you chose it doesn't need to be stuck there forever

Hope that answers your question.
If can help in any other way. Let me know!

[jeefAD]

@Jonas_Tobii Thanks for sticking with the conversation! I will do some thinking as I do like that Tobii doesn't require wearing any active/passive gear for tracking. Appreciating the implications of what's "supported", maybe it will be possible for Tobii to officially support a top-mount installation one day.

@Underscore_101_ What I meant is if top-mount isn't officially support today then future changes in the Tobii software, algorithms, etc could mean it won't work in future -- they'd only be developing for bottom-mount.

Either way, all good. I'll do some research and see if I'm willing to gamble.

[jeefAD]

Just a quick update that I ultimately went ahead with TrackIR. Sorry, @Jonas_Tobii.

As much as I like the idea of Tobii and not needing to wear active/passive emitters, I wasn't comfortable taking the gamble on a top-mount setup given the $229 USD price point and when the official 'Mounting guide' (https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/210252245) is rather explicit:

Do not mount the eye tracker on top of your screen.
You have to place the eye tracker at the center of the lower part of the screen bezel. It is necessary as the eye tracker may struggle to detect your eyes properly from other angles because of potential facial obstructions such as eyelashes, eyebrows, eyelids, etc. It is also the assumed position by our algorithms.

I'm going to assume the above is largely in reference to eye tracking, but still.

If there's a way in future to officially approve top-mount even for head tracking only, that'd be awesome!!! I would have been all over it.

[Solitaire]

I have the Tobii 5 and frankly it has become essential for me to play with my trucks.
The advantage over the TrackIR is that you have nothing on your head and complete freedom of movement.
I don't use eye tracking and have set a button on my G29 to turn it off when I want to respond to someone on my side or something like picking up my winning lottery ticket and then re-enabling it