In gaming, most levels work by a script: the player passes a certain point, then an enemies pops out of a doorway. However, researchers are using eyetracking technology and our understanding of how eye movements and attention interact to display enemies where they are least likely to be noticed. Even though the eyes are focused in a particular location, attention could be elsewhere. As a great deal of attention capture research has shown, an irrelevant object popping into existence can capture attention and the eyes even if there is no visual focus there.
To learn how to predict where a person’s attention was focused, the pair tested subjects’ reactions to an image suddenly appearing on the computer screen under different circumstances.
The experiments showed two things. First, when someone is looking at a fixed point in a complex part of a scene, they find it harder to divert their attention to a new object. Second, the researchers confirmed previous research suggesting that when looking at a moving object, people tend to focus their attention slightly ahead of it.
Those results were used to design a first-person shoot ‘em up game that could choose to make enemies appear in places where they would be either easy or hard to see. The game tracks a player’s eyes to work out areas they are paying most, and least, attention to.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn13264&print=true
