Open Drive is a new game on the eye gaze games website in which you can drive around an open environment to simply explore or try making jumps and gather points to win trophies.
It can be played with eye movement alone when set up correctly with a compatible eye gaze camera.
The game has options which allow you to do this and customise how gameplay and menus are controlled to match how you want to play and how your eye gaze camera and its software works. In this video we will look at these options.
Whilst the eye gaze games website and Open Drive don’t use their own eye gaze software, they have been built to work with eye gaze cameras that can be used to control the mouse cursor. Therefore, you will need to use some Windows Control software that your eye gaze camera is compatible with. Often eye gaze cameras will come with some software that enables this.
There are two control modes in Open Drive and across eyegazegames.com to use alongside your mouse control. These are Classic and Precise.
Precise gives you direct and constant control of your vehicle. So, you look left and right onscreen and the vehicle follows your gaze. You look up to accelerate and down to brake and reverse. The orb onscreen shows where you are looking and represents the mouse cursor. Therefore, to use this method, you need to be able to have constant control of the mouse cursor position using your eye gaze camera. For instance, using Tobii’s TD Control software with a PCEye Camera, we would do this by changing the mode from Advanced to Simplified in the settings and choose to use the Continuous option by selecting this icon. With this mode on, as I look around the screen the mouse follows my gaze and therefore, in Open Drive, the vehicle follows this, giving me fine control over its steering. Precise Mode may also be suitable for players using other assistive mice where they have direct and constant control over a mouse cursor.
Classic Mode can also be used when in constant control of the mouse cursor, if players would prefer to control the turning of the vehicle separately from movement and allows us to control the vehicles steering incrementally using onscreen buttons, which we select with a left click or the game’s inbuilt Dwell.
Classic Mode is also an alternative control option for players who don’t have access to constant control of the mouse cursor or who may benefit from using eye gaze to move a mouse cursor in stages rather than constantly.
For instance, using TD Control’s Advanced mode with a PCEye camera we look somewhere onscreen and dwell briefly to move the cursor from its last location to here. If you want to make a selection or fine tune the cursor position, you can use the options that appear on screen. Using this with Open Drive, you can use its Continuous option to have access to just the left click. So here, I look at the onscreen buttons to change the way the vehicle is facing and when I am happy with the direction, I select the Forwards arrow to drive. To stop the vehicle and change direction I select the Steer button at the bottom. Classic Mode may also be suitable for players using other assistive mice where they have direct and constant control over a mouse cursor.
Eye Gaze Options:
For both Classic and Precise you are able to choose to use the inbuilt Dwell on the website. The inbuilt Dwell is most likely to be used by those who are playing using constant control of their mouse cursor position, rather than those who are moving it from one part of the screen to another in stages.
Using the inbuilt Dwell allows you to use a centralised Dwell on the buttons which can help with selection of a button for some and avoid the cursor drifting away from it. In Precise Mode, Dwell will be used to open and control menus and for Classic Mode this will also be used for selecting the onscreen gameplay buttons.
You are able to choose between two types of Dwell animation and also change the time before a Dwell Click is completed. If using the inbuilt Dwell option, the Repeating Mode is off by default, which means that to select the same button a second time, you will need to look away from it and back again. Changing this to Allow means you can keep dwelling on a button to repeatedly select it without looking away. Instead of using the inbuilt Dwell you can also use your own Dwell, Blink or Switch for Left Click instead to suit your preferences or eye gaze method.
Another option that will affect how you control your vehicle is by choosing different vehicles. A lower top speed will mean slower turning, whilst a higher one will make turning more responsive.
If you have any questions about using eye gaze with Open Drive, please get in touch with SpecialEffect.
Open Drive is a new game on SpecialEffect’s website, eyegazegames.com. You can drive and explore an open environment or tackle obstacles like jumps and loop the loops to gather points to win trophies.
Open Drive can be played with eye movement alone when set up correctly with a compatible eye gaze camera. The game has options to enable it to be set up to work with your eye gaze camera and customise how you want to play. In this video we will look at these options.
Information on the other games can be found on this site using the Eye Gaze tag. Open Drive and other games can be played for free at https://eyegazegames.com/
Video by Cara Jessop
Music: Day Off by Aves, from artlist.io
