Eye Tracking / Tobii for KCD2: any information?

[Kradia]

Does anyone have any information confirming or denying the use of eye tracking in KCD2?

I don't care if you have never used it or want to comment on how nobody used it, there's another thread for that, go there.

I can't find any information at all which isn't a surprise and I would be very pleasantly surprised if they included it here as for those few that did use it, it added so much to the immersion. Shooters are one thing, but KCD was originally lauded for the fact it was going to be a medieval RPG with no magic, no monsters(apart from the people) and Tobii really made this my second favourite game.

Almost all the games that included it in it's short life (which died as streamers started playing with that stupid bubble showing where they were looking [./rant]) in the past (Far Cry, Assassins Creed) so Ubisoft pretty much I know, have stopped supporting it but they also roll out a game a year and I have no idea why they included it anyway of all people..

Anyone that has used it should know how good it is even with minimal active features and how bad it feels to go into a sequel without it like a feature has been left out. From the simple things like HUD-less screens which activate the compass or health bar etc when you look in that direction (or no HUD for Best difficulty in this game) to looking around the world as you walk or ride with no fast travel down to nailing a bow shot with no cross-hair this is the game eye tracking worked so well with.

I completely understand if it does not have it and why, as it is basically only for mech/flight sims which I'm not into, and its disappointing that almost every hate comment comes from people who have never used it and simply assume it's;
1.Cheating. In a single-player game. Also that's not how it works anyway.
2. Pointless. In a game I loved for it's immersion, being able to look around using your eyes instead of the mouse and hide the HUD unless you look at it I disagree.
3. A fad that nobody bought into... Well, yeah. That's why I am asking for a definitive answer. Expecting to be disappointed but open to be pleasantly surprised like with the first game.

I mean hell, I put hundreds of hours into it, I liked it, I would love to see it in this game but am also a realist, so until I see a definitive YES or NO, I guess I'll Wait until early February. I've bought the game either way. Cannot wait!

[loaf]

bump bc i use Tobii for the first game and really want it for the 2nd on launch.

i didnt realize i could even use my headtracker till i messed with some of the settings and now i feel like i cant play without it

[HHmm]

It will track if you look at the gay stuff or not.

[Yakito]

I was actually surprised it was an option when I installed the game.

Do you need special gear for it? Or just any camera will do?

[Draewa]

Originally posted by Yakito:

I was actually surprised it was an option when I installed the game.

Do you need special gear for it? Or just any camera will do?

You need a Tobii Eye Tracker 5, or a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop with an integrated eye tracker. There are games that can be set up to use face tracking (which you can do with almost any webcam), but unfortunately KC:D isn't one of them.

[Draewa]

Seconded, would be really cool to have eye tracking in KC:D2. Currently doing another playthrough of the first one, and it's gonna suck not to have headtracker freelook in the second one.

[Kradia]

Nice, a few more people who used it. It would be great to have a definitive answer and as for gear, as stated above, but also I believe any version of Tobii was fine as I think I had the Tobii 4?

Even so, although it will be a massive culture shock to not have it as I just checked and I had 500 hours and I remember going from Farcry 6 to its DLC and I just couldn't play it as they didn't include Eye Tracking and for a first person game it adds so much immersion... Of course I will still play KCD2, but I'm going into it with the mindset it doesn't have it as I know the feeling of expecting it and not getting it and simply ruining the experience.

[Yannerix]

So, ... doesn't look like it's in. The first one had native support, but I wasn't able to tickle anything out of it with the Tobii 5 attached. Too bad. Would be nice to patch in it later,

[Draewa]

Originally posted by Yannerix:

So, ... doesn't look like it's in. The first one had native support, but I wasn't able to tickle anything out of it with the Tobii 5 attached. Too bad. Would be nice to patch in it later,

I think that'll mostly depend on whether Warhorse still has a license agreement with Tobii... unfortunately the Tobii ecosystem is a lot more closed off than the general headtracking scene, if you want Tobii integration you need to go through the Tobii company and pay for licensing rather than being able to just implement a generic solution. I don't know how expensive that license would be, but given how few users do eye tracking (there's dozens of us at best) I can't imagine it would be worth Warhorse's time.

What I would actually prefer to see would be OpenTrack/FreeTrack support - not bound by commercial licensing, and compatible with pretty much every head tracking solution out there (including Tobii via plugins). That way we Tobii users at least get head tracking back, and all the guys using other headtrackers (TrackIR/FaceTrackNoIR/OpenTrack) would get something as well. Would still be a significant amount of development time for a tiny niche feature though, I can imagine that Warhorse has other priorities.

[Kradia]

Originally posted by Draewa:

Originally posted by Yannerix:

So, ... doesn't look like it's in. The first one had native support, but I wasn't able to tickle anything out of it with the Tobii 5 attached. Too bad. Would be nice to patch in it later,

I think that'll mostly depend on whether Warhorse still has a license agreement with Tobii... unfortunately the Tobii ecosystem is a lot more closed off than the general headtracking scene, if you want Tobii integration you need to go through the Tobii company and pay for licensing rather than being able to just implement a generic solution. I don't know how expensive that license would be, but given how few users do eye tracking (there's dozens of us at best) I can't imagine it would be worth Warhorse's time.

What I would actually prefer to see would be OpenTrack/FreeTrack support - not bound by commercial licensing, and compatible with pretty much every head tracking solution out there (including Tobii via plugins). That way we Tobii users at least get head tracking back, and all the guys using other headtrackers (TrackIR/FaceTrackNoIR/OpenTrack) would get something as well. Would still be a significant amount of development time for a tiny niche feature though, I can imagine that Warhorse has other priorities.

Yeah. So I looked a little into that, what;s the actual difference between putting Tobii support or eye tracking support? or is eye tracking purely open source, tried to get I think Open-track and instantly gave up and decided to just play (get the hot fix for NVIDIA users. I'm either really lucky, really early in or the game is fantastic on a 4080 original in experimental mode with steam and NVIDIA interfaces for enhanced detail.

No crashes, no NIXXES BSOD's and no stutter?

Anyway off topic, Tobii really needs to work better with games and licensing because with 2 games or every air sim, it has a tiny player base.

Can they put in eye tracking and still include built in aim at view, HUD at view and look at view? Or is this Tobii? And if so what is this option? The ability for players to mod it in?

[Draewa]

Originally posted by Kradia:

what;s the actual difference between putting Tobii support or eye tracking support?

Aah, sorry, I wasn't really clear in my post - there's a difference between head tracking and eye tracking. Head tracking translates head movements into games, and allows you to look around in games by moving your head around. For head tracking, there's a whole ecosystem of free (as in "free to implement without licensing issues") software, most prominently OpenTrack. There's a ton of head tracking hardware you can use (TrackIR, DIY IR trackers, facecam-based trackers) and a game that has an OpenTrack implementation will work with all of it without issues. If you've seen videos of people having real head movements in MSFS, DCS, ArmA - that's head tracking.

Eye tracking tracks your pupils, and it's something that until recently was pretty much only used for scientific research and some very niche accessibility applications (e.g., systems that let paralyzed people control a computer mouse with their eyes). Tobii is the first and only company (that I know of) that's making eye trackers for gaming. Look-at-aiming and HUD dimming are Tobii-specific eye tracking things, to have those features in your game you need to work directly with Tobii and get a commercial software license from them.

Originally posted by Kradia:

Can they put in eye tracking and still include built in aim at view, HUD at view and look at view? Or is this Tobii? And if so what is this option? The ability for players to mod it in?

What I was talking about in my post is that Tobii devices are also capable of generic head tracking. You can use a Tobii 5 to get head movement in any game that supports TrackIR, OpenTrack or similar. I meant that my preferred solution would be for Warhorse to implement generic head tracking compatibility. That would mean HUD dimming and look-at-aiming wouldn't be supported, but moving the camera with head movements would be. And it would work for both Tobii users and users of head trackers.

Modding in support for eye tracking features is extremely unlikely, would require direct cooperation with Tobii and Warhorse. Modding in head tracking might be possible, I don't have enough experience with CryEngine to know for sure.

Originally posted by Kradia:

Anyway off topic, Tobii really needs to work better with games and licensing because with 2 games or every air sim, it has a tiny player base.

Tobii's main market is scientific research and market analysis, gaming is not really a priority for them sadly.

[Josephus]

This guy figured it out with Opentrack https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/1ijzf68/opentrack_enabled_head_tracking_solved_for_kcd2/

[Kradia]

Originally posted by Draewa:

Originally posted by Kradia:

what;s the actual difference between putting Tobii support or eye tracking support?

Aah, sorry, I wasn't really clear in my post - there's a difference between head tracking and eye tracking. Head tracking translates head movements into games, and allows you to look around in games by moving your head around. For head tracking, there's a whole ecosystem of free (as in "free to implement without licensing issues") software, most prominently OpenTrack. There's a ton of head tracking hardware you can use (TrackIR, DIY IR trackers, facecam-based trackers) and a game that has an OpenTrack implementation will work with all of it without issues. If you've seen videos of people having real head movements in MSFS, DCS, ArmA - that's head tracking.

Eye tracking tracks your pupils, and it's something that until recently was pretty much only used for scientific research and some very niche accessibility applications (e.g., systems that let paralyzed people control a computer mouse with their eyes). Tobii is the first and only company (that I know of) that's making eye trackers for gaming. Look-at-aiming and HUD dimming are Tobii-specific eye tracking things, to have those features in your game you need to work directly with Tobii and get a commercial software license from them.

Originally posted by Kradia:

Can they put in eye tracking and still include built in aim at view, HUD at view and look at view? Or is this Tobii? And if so what is this option? The ability for players to mod it in?

What I was talking about in my post is that Tobii devices are also capable of generic head tracking. You can use a Tobii 5 to get head movement in any game that supports TrackIR, OpenTrack or similar. I meant that my preferred solution would be for Warhorse to implement generic head tracking compatibility. That would mean HUD dimming and look-at-aiming wouldn't be supported, but moving the camera with head movements would be. And it would work for both Tobii users and users of head trackers.

Modding in support for eye tracking features is extremely unlikely, would require direct cooperation with Tobii and Warhorse. Modding in head tracking might be possible, I don't have enough experience with CryEngine to know for sure.

Originally posted by Kradia:

Anyway off topic, Tobii really needs to work better with games and licensing because with 2 games or every air sim, it has a tiny player base.

Tobii's main market is scientific research and market analysis, gaming is not really a priority for them sadly.

No, Makes sense. Sad but true. I marked the guy below as the answer as this is probably the best we will get, using open track for head tracking. I'll give it a go but tbh, I still like the game, and for me the immersion is in the pupils. moving your whole head was only if I really wanted to look around, being able to look straight ahead but activate HUD, or aim at look and then moving your head if you see something in the distance or need to keep someone in your sight, that was where it was at. I'll give this a go, but I will probably just enjoy the game as is.

Thanks all for your comments and information. As well as showing that the couple people who used it really did enjoy it :)

[Ospi]

I just wish we had vr modding for cryengine like ue. Can you imagine this world in vr??

[Draewa]

Originally posted by Ospi:

I just wish we had vr modding for cryengine like ue. Can you imagine this world in vr??

VR is possible (both for KCD 1 & 2) via VorpX. Just finished a KCD 1 play session with my Pico 4 :)

It isn't 'proper' VR (no hand interactions), it's very janky, and it requires a lot of tweaking - but it's definitely a cool experience. Wouldn't do a full playthrough like that, but it's very very cool to do VR sightseeing.

[Ospi]

Originally posted by Draewa:

Originally posted by Ospi:

I just wish we had vr modding for cryengine like ue. Can you imagine this world in vr??

VR is possible (both for KCD 1 & 2) via VorpX. Just finished a KCD 1 play session with my Pico 4 :)

It isn't 'proper' VR (no hand interactions), it's very janky, and it requires a lot of tweaking - but it's definitely a cool experience. Wouldn't do a full playthrough like that, but it's very very cool to do VR sightseeing.

Interesting, I'll give this a look.