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VoluMetrics Is An Evolved Heat Mapping Tool For VR/AR User Tracking

VoluMetrics Is An Evolved Heat Mapping Tool For VR/AR User Tracking

Spaceteam VR developer Cooperative Innovations last week revealed its latest licensable development tool, VoluMetrics.

The simplest way to think of VoluMetrics is a heat mapping tool. The toolkit is able to track where VR and AR headset users are looking in any given experience. It then displays that data to developers. Unlike traditional heat mapping, which will read the user’s gaze on a 2D plane, VoluMetrics provides 3D, positional information.

Imagine you’re looking at a corner, for example. Traditional 2D heat mapping wouldn’t make the distinction in distance. VoluMetrics would more accurately capture what the user was perceiving.

There’s also support for eye-tracking data in relevant headsets like Vive Pro Eye and Magic Leap.

Crucially, this will give developers important insight into behaviour inside their immersive applications. When giving players the freedom afforded by VR and AR headsets, it’s important to make sure their attention is being directed to the right place. Heat mapping lets you see areas of virtual environments are too hidden and being missed etc.

VoluMetrics is currently available as an Unreal Engine 4 plugin. Cooperative Innovations says additional support will follow later down the line.

It’s the developer’s second piece of VR-enhanced development offerings. Back in February, we reported on Ikabod, a means of delivering accurately tracked virtual avatars. The studio says more tools are on the way, too.

As for its gaming efforts, the developer is still working on its virtual adaptation of Spaceteam. That should be arriving in the near future. We’re also looking forward to an update on its multiplayer dungeon crawler, Raiders of Erda. We don’t know when that will be releasing, though.

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