forums.naturalpoint.com

Hi all,

I'm looking for a way to measure gaze shifts with a high temporal and spatial resolution in a reaserch environment. Put simply, participants hear a sound from one of four loudspeakers and shoud direct their gaze to the spatial source of the sound. The research interest concerns the time to do so in the presence of another sound. After some research for hardware I thought that TrackIR seems to be the solution. Now I have a question concerning the data output of the TrackIR. Is it possible to log the data generated by the TrackIR and store them in a e.g. textfile for further processing? Does someone have experience in coupling TrackIR with popular reaction-time-measurement programs like presentation (http://www.neurobs.com/)?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Malte

Hi Malte,

I don't think TrackIR is going to be the right product for you. It's really just designed for view control in games/sims. It doesn't offer data in real-world units, and it doesn't actually track gaze. It will track head movements, using our vector tracking algorithm, but again, the data is streamed over our API as arbitrary "game units." This tech is not adaptable to actual gaze tracking.

If you're looking for a true gaze tracker, and you're on a tight budget, I would recommend our OptiTrack camera line + free Camera SDK as a starting point. Using a V120:SLIM camera + the Camera SDK, you can explore using a free computer vision library like OpenCV to build your own eye tracking system using Raw or MJPEG-compressed grayscale frames from the camera:

http://nashruddin.com/OpenCV_Eye_Detection

Addtionally, there are turn-key eye tracking systems on the market that already support Presentation, though they are expensive:

http://www.neurobs.com/wiki/Presentatio ... /ViewPoint

If you don't need actual pupil/iris tracking, and can use head tracking instead, I'd recommend our V120:Duo. It's due out soon, and provides very accurate, very accessible 6DoF data via marker-based motion tracking. It includes a variety of export/streaming options, including CSV.

Hi Seth,

thanks for the quick reply. My description of my concern in the original post was a bit misleading because I'm primarily interested in the turning of the head. But as the TrackIR has no usable data output I will look for an alternative. Thanks for the useful hints und links! I will take a look and see what fits most!

Maybe I will have to ask some further questions later.

Thanks a lot!

Malte

Head tracking can be accomplished through use of the TrackIR and our Camera SDK, however you will need a vector clip on the subject, and technical support for the TrackIR through the Camera SDK is not guaranteed.