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The Sentry Eye Tracker from SteelSeries is an unassuming slim black bar. Looking at it, you might never know that it packs technology that could completely change the way the world plays and watches e-sports — but that’s just the beginning of the potential of of the Sentry.
The Sentry is being produced in a partnership with Tobii Technology, one of the global leaders in the world of eye tracking systems. The device is designed to attach to your monitor while you game, and it will use four infrared sensors and one camera to track the motions of your eyes around the screen. SteelSeries is pitching the Sentry as a sort of virtual, visual coach, since it will allow you to compare the ways your eyes move with “benchmarks” for eye movement provided by professional e-sports players.
steelseries sentry head on
Training your eyes
When discussing the statistics of eye tracking, SteelSeries speaks of “Fixations per Minute,” or FPM, which “tracks how often a user moves his or her eye gaze and attention around the screen.” According to SteelSeries, low FPM values translate into a gamer who is moving their eyes a great deal and who “is able to process a lot of information.” While some may be skeptical of the value of this new metric, it does seem logical that there would be a relationship between FPM and APM — “Actions per Minute” — which is a measurement of skill with a value that few e-sports fans question.
When the Sentry is released later this year, gamers will be able to begin comparing their FPM scores to benchmarks provided by top e-sports players. While there may only be a few of these benchmarks available at first, if the metric catches on it’s likely that e-sports players and fans will be able to publicly share their benchmark scores for different games.
steelseries sentry screen attach
For new players attempting to improve their performance in a competitive game, the Sentry will provide feedback and measurements of one aspect of gameplay that has previously been very hard to track. Things like K/D ratios, APM, and mouse grip styles are familiar concepts for e-sports enthusiasts and there have been countless online discussions and guides produced over the years dedicated to improving these aspects of competitive gaming, but up until now eye movements have been an afterthought, if they were even thought of at all.
The way your eyes process on-screen information in a game should be front and center when you’re trying to improve your gaming skills. Without other senses to rely upon (sound takes a distant second place in most titles), vision is everything. After all, it doesn’t really matter how many actions per minute you can perform if your eyes are missing critical notifications and details on the screen, right?
The Sentry could be the tool that finally allows competitive gamers to give vision its proper due attention. With the Sentry and the SteelSeries software, players will be able not only to track their fixations and compare against the pros but also produce heat maps of where they tend to fixate on the screen, to identify potential blind spots or places they neglect.
steelseries sentry heat map
It’s clear that the Sentry is an exciting tool for players looking to improve their skills — but there’s even more to it than might be apparent at first glance.
Watching you watching your game
On a TV in the SteelSeries meeting room at E3 the crew had a replay of a Dota 2 match playing, with on-screen charts displaying information regarding fixations per minute. What was more interesting to me, though, was the small colored circle that was moving around the screen. It only took me a second to figure out that the circle was showing where the player had been looking during the match. The more I thought about that relatively simple concept, the more the possibilities fascinated me.
The most obvious application of game replays with the Sentry vision overlay would be for players reviewing their own matches, watching the way their eyes moved around the screen. It’s easy to imagine how this could be a useful exercise for serious gamers, especially when critical mistakes were made. How many times have you been playing a game and wondered, “Why didn’t I see that guy?!” With the Sentry, you can actually find an answer.
The popularity of livestreaming and YouTube gaming videos opens up another interesting potential application of the Sentry, and one that hasn’t been lost on SteelSeries. They spoke with excitement in our E3 meeting about plans to integrate the Sentry with Twitch broadcasting so that viewers would actually be able to see where the player was looking on the screen at a given moment. This could provide an extra layer of interesting information for viewers of competitive events, but it could also be a fun tool just for casual streamers and YouTube personalities.
steelseries sentry
Eye control
One final cornerstone of the Sentry’s revolutionary potential is in the world of eye-controlled movement. While this is an area of technology that has been talked about for almost as long as there have been personal computers, it has never felt closer to reality than it does when you see the Sentry in action. SteelSeries and Tobii are currently working on ways to offer eye-control in the future, so it might not be available when the Sentry launches, but would come through future software updates.
Though the team behind the Sentry is already talking about exciting scenarios like “faking out the goalie in a game of FIFA by looking one way and shooting another,” gamers may have to wait a while for that day to arrive. As is the case with products like the Oculus it’s likely that some work on the part of game developers would be necessary to take full advantage of the potential the Sentry offers, so if the idea of using your eyes as a “third hand” while gaming seems exciting to you you’ll have to hope that the people working on your favorite games feel the same way. Without full support from game developers there’s still a lot that the Sentry could accomplish –on-screen hot-spots that automatically open menus or execute commands when focused upon are ideas that come to mind — but the more of the industry that gets on board with the Sentry’s potential, the quicker its potential will be unlocked.
The Sentry is being produced in a partnership with Tobii Technology, one of the global leaders in the world of eye tracking systems. The device is designed to attach to your monitor while you game, and it will use four infrared sensors and one camera to track the motions of your eyes around the screen. SteelSeries is pitching the Sentry as a sort of virtual, visual coach, since it will allow you to compare the ways your eyes move with “benchmarks” for eye movement provided by professional e-sports players.
steelseries sentry head on
Training your eyes
When discussing the statistics of eye tracking, SteelSeries speaks of “Fixations per Minute,” or FPM, which “tracks how often a user moves his or her eye gaze and attention around the screen.” According to SteelSeries, low FPM values translate into a gamer who is moving their eyes a great deal and who “is able to process a lot of information.” While some may be skeptical of the value of this new metric, it does seem logical that there would be a relationship between FPM and APM — “Actions per Minute” — which is a measurement of skill with a value that few e-sports fans question.
When the Sentry is released later this year, gamers will be able to begin comparing their FPM scores to benchmarks provided by top e-sports players. While there may only be a few of these benchmarks available at first, if the metric catches on it’s likely that e-sports players and fans will be able to publicly share their benchmark scores for different games.
steelseries sentry screen attach
For new players attempting to improve their performance in a competitive game, the Sentry will provide feedback and measurements of one aspect of gameplay that has previously been very hard to track. Things like K/D ratios, APM, and mouse grip styles are familiar concepts for e-sports enthusiasts and there have been countless online discussions and guides produced over the years dedicated to improving these aspects of competitive gaming, but up until now eye movements have been an afterthought, if they were even thought of at all.
The way your eyes process on-screen information in a game should be front and center when you’re trying to improve your gaming skills. Without other senses to rely upon (sound takes a distant second place in most titles), vision is everything. After all, it doesn’t really matter how many actions per minute you can perform if your eyes are missing critical notifications and details on the screen, right?
The Sentry could be the tool that finally allows competitive gamers to give vision its proper due attention. With the Sentry and the SteelSeries software, players will be able not only to track their fixations and compare against the pros but also produce heat maps of where they tend to fixate on the screen, to identify potential blind spots or places they neglect.
steelseries sentry heat map
It’s clear that the Sentry is an exciting tool for players looking to improve their skills — but there’s even more to it than might be apparent at first glance.
Watching you watching your game
On a TV in the SteelSeries meeting room at E3 the crew had a replay of a Dota 2 match playing, with on-screen charts displaying information regarding fixations per minute. What was more interesting to me, though, was the small colored circle that was moving around the screen. It only took me a second to figure out that the circle was showing where the player had been looking during the match. The more I thought about that relatively simple concept, the more the possibilities fascinated me.
The most obvious application of game replays with the Sentry vision overlay would be for players reviewing their own matches, watching the way their eyes moved around the screen. It’s easy to imagine how this could be a useful exercise for serious gamers, especially when critical mistakes were made. How many times have you been playing a game and wondered, “Why didn’t I see that guy?!” With the Sentry, you can actually find an answer.
The popularity of livestreaming and YouTube gaming videos opens up another interesting potential application of the Sentry, and one that hasn’t been lost on SteelSeries. They spoke with excitement in our E3 meeting about plans to integrate the Sentry with Twitch broadcasting so that viewers would actually be able to see where the player was looking on the screen at a given moment. This could provide an extra layer of interesting information for viewers of competitive events, but it could also be a fun tool just for casual streamers and YouTube personalities.
steelseries sentry
Eye control
One final cornerstone of the Sentry’s revolutionary potential is in the world of eye-controlled movement. While this is an area of technology that has been talked about for almost as long as there have been personal computers, it has never felt closer to reality than it does when you see the Sentry in action. SteelSeries and Tobii are currently working on ways to offer eye-control in the future, so it might not be available when the Sentry launches, but would come through future software updates.
Though the team behind the Sentry is already talking about exciting scenarios like “faking out the goalie in a game of FIFA by looking one way and shooting another,” gamers may have to wait a while for that day to arrive. As is the case with products like the Oculus it’s likely that some work on the part of game developers would be necessary to take full advantage of the potential the Sentry offers, so if the idea of using your eyes as a “third hand” while gaming seems exciting to you you’ll have to hope that the people working on your favorite games feel the same way. Without full support from game developers there’s still a lot that the Sentry could accomplish –on-screen hot-spots that automatically open menus or execute commands when focused upon are ideas that come to mind — but the more of the industry that gets on board with the Sentry’s potential, the quicker its potential will be unlocked.
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