Oculus to acquire eye-tracking startup The Eye Tribe
For a virtual reality headset, being able to tell exactly what part of the image is the user looking at could be a vital function, so it's no wonder that the big names on the market are doing everything they can to enhance their eye-tracking technology. On that note, a recent report from the online publication TechCrunch indicates that Oculus has just acquired The Eye Tribe, a Danish startup that was founded four years ago by a group of former Ph.D. students.
This acquisition won't only allow the Oculus Rift headset to offer a more interactive experience, but it will also be of great help in reducing the processing power required by the foveated rendering technology. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, foveated rendering is a technique that tries to decrease the GPU load by only providing high-quality images for the exact area where you're looking at while decreasing the image quality for the places that are just in your peripheral vision or outside your field of vision. Furthermore, Oculus is also working on a wireless headset called Santa Cruz and optimizing the resource consumption could be the key to its success.
At the moment, Oculus hasn't made any official comments regarding the price of the acquisition or its plans for the future. In case you're interested in reading some more VR-related stories, you should check out: "Daydream VR may launch quicker than we thought" or "Dynamic FOV modifications could stop VR motion sickness".
