MSI announced a partnership with eye-tracking company Tobii Tech to bring the emerging technology to the company's already impressive gaming laptop portfolio. The just-announced concept notebook GT72 is the first device of its kind to have eye-tracking built right into it.
Although it's not a new concept on its own, the idea of using eye-tracking on a gaming laptop is something quite novel. In the near future, games are expected to react to eye contact, bringing immersion to a whole new level in games, and MSI is apparently ready with the GT72 when that happens.
Another first for notebooks is the addition of a G-Sync ready display, capable of matching the refresh rate to any given frame rate between 30-75 Hz. (We should note, however, that Gigabyte's new Aorus gaming notebooks also have G-Sync ready displays.) The GT72 will have a GTX 980M GPU paired with 8 GB of GDDR5, which should have no trouble delivering the graphics at those rates.
Going forward, MSI will be equipping all new gaming laptops with the latest mobile Intel Core i7-5700HQ processors. MSI claimed that these new CPUs offer 7-10 percent more performance than the previous Core i7 processors.
While MSI was light on specifications regarding the GT72, it, and Tobii, were more effusive about this collaboration. "This concept notebook is only the beginning of our extensive partnership with Tobii -- a partnership that will expand beyond hardware products and into the development of eye-tracking content and games," said Eric Kuo, vice president of MSI in a press release.
In the release, Tobii mentioned the four key "immersions" it sees for the future of gaming:
- Infinite Screen
- Multidimensional Movement
- Response to Eye-Contact
- Immersive Graphics and Sound
Mysteriously, Tobii stated that the MSI GT72 with eye tracking is just the first collaboration between the two companies. Other OEMs are also encouraged to join the fun via the Tobii EyeX Dev Kit.
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