Tobii Eye Tracker 5

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone uses the Tobii Eye Tracker 5?

I never wear hats and I rarely wear headphones when I am gaming especially in single player so the Trackir is pretty pointless for me.

Yes I use the Tobii Eye Tracker 5 and it works great even with glasses. Until there are more configuration options inside of MSFS(please add your vote here: Tobii Eye Tracking needs configuration options) you can use FaceTrackNoIR to get 6DOF and tweak sensitivities.

There are also plenty of other people who use Tobii Eye Tracker:
Making Tobii eye tracker work with SU7
Tobii Eye Tracker?
Support for Tobii Eyetrack
Tobii Eye Tracker - How to Tweak?

The reason I’ve steered clear of the very popular TrackIR or all hacks that use hats/headsets with LEDs.

Also since I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on Tobii tracker just to realize it doesn’t work for me, I did some preliminary tests with a lowly 720p webcam, Opentrack, AITrack (both are free and can be found in Github) and some Opentrack profiles from Flightsim.to.

I had reasonably good results. With Opentrack alone everything was a mess, but when I installed AITrack in front of Opentrack, tracking input was normalized to very acceptable limits. It even worked with low light conditions and obviously it doesn’t require any peripherals, hats, LEDs etc other than a webcam. However it takes a bit of effort to find a sweet spot for the settings if you are CPU bound but in any case my tests were successful with a 9-year old 2500k CPU. Also the tracking curves are not ideal, hence the need for Opentrack profiles from Flightsim.

My main gripe is that I’m constantly moving and realigning myself left and right and back and forth on my chair, so this affects camera movement a lot and I have to reset it frequently (via keyboard).

It’s not better than Tobii tracker but it’s cheap.

1 Like

I haven’t used Tobii, but I do have a spare smartphone that I use with SmoothTrack. The state of face tracking systems these days is very impressive. I’m not sure how much the eye tracking part of the Tobii system brings to the table, but at the very least it should (according to reviews) deliver extremely accurate face tracking.

IMO, the IR-based solutions are going to be considered obsolete within a few years.

1 Like

I got mine 2 days ago and spent yesterday trying it out.

It’s brilliant! They are a tad expensive, it’s true; but I got a fantastic deal on eBay for £185, from the organiser of an e-gaming event who was selling them off. They were only used for 2 weeks and not for long periods, and they were as good as new. If you’re in the UK he might have some left.

I can’t imagine being without it now.

2 Likes

I’d be interested in hearing people’s latest experiences with the Tobii Eye Tracker 5 and vs buying a VR headset e.g. Meta Quest 2 or 3? I have a 27 inch monitor.

Thanks :slight_smile:

I never liked VR but after having used TrackIR for years I moved to Tobii last summer and I´m very happy. It has all the good points of TrackIR plus eye tracking and you don´t need any wearable. Eye tracking works well with glasses and multiple light conditions so it´s very confortable and practical. They had a promo discount during their Midsommar Sales (end of june) and I got an interesting discount.

Cheers

1 Like

2+ years later I came this close in buying Tobii (especially with A320 pilot’s -15% coupon) but thought otherwise and I’m very happy about it. Tobii can only be mounted at the bottom of the screen (yes, where the LG widespread’s only button is located) and I’ve got one big Honeycomb Alpha along with a 10" tablet between the bottom of the screen and my head.

Instead I revisited the good old Opentrack/AItrack solution, adjusted mapping curves a little better this time and I’m enjoying every second of it.

I have tried again and again with 4 different headsets to get into VR, but it just doesn’t do it for me. The main reason is the constant battle with adjusting extra software like OpenXR, runtimes, toolkits, virtual desktop, etc., and getting it all to work reliably with MSFS. This unfortunately means a lot of VR time is messing around with your setup rather than flying.

You are also saddled with various handicaps like screen door effect, blurry edges and generally low quality visuals compared to a 4K monitor, and you can’t easily see your other screens, charts and your flight controls from inside the headset. There are solutions to some of these, such as pass-through or further addons to give you a tablet in the cockpit, but they still all introduce more compromises and mean adjusting yet more settings.

I tried opentrack and aitrack with my webcam, and got even better results with stableview, so was prompted to try the tobii. Overall I am very happy with it, and it is more precise and adjustable than the (admittedly very good) free webcam solutions.

Yes, you do give up a little immersion compared to VR, but it is still a considerable step closer to real flying when compared to a static image on a monitor, and the compromises I listed above make the tobii solution far preferable for me.

1 Like

They have this now, that allows more freedom in mounting the Tobii off the display.

Yes, I’m aware of this relatively pricey bracket. All the videos I saw were mounting it below the screen anyway, which still doesn’t work for me as there’s tons of junk between that place and my head and I’m about to add even more (e.g. tablets). I’ll double check if this can be placed anywhere at all, e.g. diagonally to the left of the screen and completely out of the way.

Other than that, I gave stableview a try yesterday night and I think it had slightly less stuttering than AITrack but the mappings of Opentrack need to be readjusted. Tobii may be better (if I leave its limitations aside), but not that much better that would convince me to invest 230-280 EUR on it compared to the free solutions.

I might look to mount my tobii ontop of the Alpha yoke, but waiting on a stand so that I can make the entire setup moveable.

1 Like