VR Games That Use Eye Tracking For Gameplay

VR. despite having its origins decades ago, is still a burgeoning technology. With a prohibitive cost, extensive set-up, and a limited selection of games to choose from, it’s hard for it to really break through. That’s a shame because some VR headsets, namely the PSVR2, have some incredible technology that leads to some fantastic gaming experiences.

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Eye-tracking isn’t brand new in gaming, but it has mainly been used as a form of accessibility to supplement other features, rather than provide new ones. The VR rendition of eye-tracking does some incredible stuff, both in making games run better and in giving you a brand new way to play.

7

No Man’s Sky VR

No Man’s Sky in VR is already a dizzying experience. The scale of planets and spaceships are suddenly incomprehensible when you have to see them with your own eyes. This is a whole galaxy that you can explore step by step. That’s a lot to take in. And so eye-tracking is used in the PSVR2 version for some fascinating effects.

Foveated rendering is a technique where the game puts the most detail into the things in your field of view, softening and blurring the things you don’t look at. This both makes the game run better, but also makes things on your periphery less detailed, just like in reality. It’s having your cake and eating it too.

6

The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR

Supermassive Games is well-known for its narrative horror games, with the Dark Pictures anthology making up the bulk of the studios efforts. Across these games, a few VR entries have been made as well, with Switchback VR being the first Dark Pictures game made for the medium. It’s more terrifying than anything the regular games will offer up, with some VR twists as well.

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Some enemies only move when you blink, meaning you have to strain your eyes just to avoid them. In other scenarios, they will only move when you look away from them. Look directly at other enemies, and they’ll lock eyes with you and rush you. The act of choosing where you look and if you can even blink is an incredible idea in a horror setting.

5

Firewall Ultra

A multiplayer shooter sounds like an enticing idea for VR, though it is always going to be a risk. Making sure everyone’s VR headset is viewing the game the same, how well the real-life environment translates to gameplay, and so on. Firewall Ultra’s playerbase dwindled quickly, but the VR quirks they added in did allow the game to remain snappy.

On top of the typical intuitive means of movement and weapon selection in VR, Firewall Ultra let you navigate menus just by looking at them. You could hide and reveal UI elements with a flick of your eyes, and swap to another weapon just by looking at it. It kept gameplay fast and meant even with limited space you weren’t entirely hampered in certain gameplay aspects.

4

VRChat

The metaverse (remember that?) was hyped up by massive tech companies as the next evolution of digital living, ignoring the reality that this supposed future had existed for decades already, with Second Life one of the earliest examples. VRChat feels like a successor to that, letting you casually exist in a world created and run by other players.

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And in trying to create a world that feels digitally lived in, VRChat is an incredibly customisable game. With a little bit of tinkering, any VR headset with eye-trackign can be made to work with the game, letting your avatar look exactly where you’re looking. It adds a bit more life, provided you have a compatible model.

3

Rez Infinite

Despite Rez being such a well-known name within certain sects of gaming, it is only a single game originally made for the Dreamcast. Never a sequel, remake or anything. Instead, it has been continually ported and improved over the years to its current point as Rez Infinite. While not needed, this version of the game is VR-compatible, and has some incredible eye-tracking on PSVR2.

Rez is a rail shooter, and the VR version lets you choose from a variety of settings to aim. One of these is eye-tracking. Not only can you aim at everything with your own eyes, it is obscenely accurate. It makes the game a completely hands-free experience as well, letting you soak up the sights and sounds without any other distractions. You don’t even need to move your head.

2

Synapse

If there’s any type of game that helps sell VR, it’s a first-person shooter that lets you literally see the world through your own eyes. When those are the only games on VR though, it can start to get pretty boring very quickly. Synapse, while not exactly exceptional, does add a bit more visual and technical flair to help it stand out from the crowd.

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Synapse uses a monochrome aesthetic, with your abilities being the sole colour. It also uses eye-tracking to know exactly what you’re looking at. That means rather than having to point at something to use your telekinesis on it, you just cast a glance. This lets the combat stay fast, but also leaves your hands free to do other things. Effective multi-tasking.

1

Before Your Eyes

Before Your Eyes is a beautiful visual and narrative experience. It is short and sweet, showing how life can pass by in the blink of an eye. Except it actually came out before PSVR2 and the general adoption of eye-tracking. So when it came to PSVR2, eye-tracking was added in the most literal way the game could implement it.

Before Your Eyes is a selection of scenes, progressing each time you blink. With eye-tracking, the scene ends and the next begins as soon as you blink. No going back. You have to relish the scene as long as you can. Blink, and it’s gone forever. It is an incredibly smart implementation that only serves to make the game all the more impactful.

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