Accessing eye tracking data in your Unity script
The following assumes that you followed the steps for setting up eye tracking in your MRTK scene (see Basic MRTK setup to use eye tracking). To access eye tracking data in your MonoBehaviour scripts is easy! Simply use MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider.
MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider
While the MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider provides several helpful variables, the key ones for eye tracking input are the following:
UseEyeTracking: True if eye tracking hardware is available and the user has given permission to use eye tracking in the app.
IsEyeCalibrationValid: Indicates whether the user's eye tracking calibration is valid or not. It returns 'null', if the value has not yet received data from the eye tracking system. It may be invalid, because the user skipped the eye tracking calibration.
IsEyeGazeValid: Indicates whether the current eye tracking data is valid. It may be invalid due to exceeded timeout (should be robust to the user blinking though) or lack of tracking hardware or permissions. Check out our Missing eye calibration notification sample that explains how to detect whether a user is eye calibrated and to show an appropriate notification.
GazeOrigin: Origin of the gaze ray. Please note that this will return the head gaze origin if 'IsEyeGazeValid' is false.
GazeDirection: Direction of the gaze ray. This will return the head gaze direction if 'IsEyeGazeValid' is false.
HitInfo, HitPosition, HitNormal, etc.: Information about the currently gazed at target. Again, if 'IsEyeGazeValid' is false, this will be based on the user's head gaze.
Examples for using MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider
Here is an example from the FollowEyeGaze.cs:
- Get the point of a hologram that the user is looking at:
// Show the object at the hit position of the user's eye gaze ray with the target.
gameObject.transform.position = MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider.HitPosition;
- Showing a visual asset at a fixed distance from where the user is currently looking:
// If no target is hit, show the object at a default distance along the gaze ray.
gameObject.transform.position =
MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider.GazeOrigin +
MixedRealityToolkit.InputSystem.EyeGazeProvider.GazeDirection.normalized * defaultDistanceInMeters;