Acer’s New Monitor Comes With Eye Tracking

Finally: a monitor for the racers and space pilots among us.

Just ahead of the official opening of the CES show floor, Acer has announced a new ultrawide monitor with – no joke – eye-tracking functionality. Called the Predator Z301CT, it’s a 30-inch ultrawide monitor with inbuilt Tobii eye tracking technology.

Much like TrackIR, the Tobii wizardry can be used to complement your existing setup. Instead of having to turn the right stick or move the mouse to control your camera, for instance, you can simply turn your head and the in-game view will shift as it detects the movement of your eyes.

Image: Acer

According to Acer, the Tobii eye tracking is already supported by 45 games including Elite: Dangerous and Watch Dogs 2. Star Citizen fans have messed around with it before, although according to reports on forums and social media it was more useful for looking around the cockpit than aiming. Tobii’s eye tracking was touted as a feature for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided though, and according to Ars Technica back in August it was quite handy in certain circumstances (gaming yes, Windows not so much).

And because it’s pretty much standard for any screen that isn’t 4K these days, the Z301CT has a 200hz refresh rate and a 4ms response rate, which is the same latency as all of Acer’s monitors with an IPS panel.

There’s no word on availability or Australian pricing, but you can expect it to cost a lot. That’s par for the course for monitors at CES 2017 though: if you’re going to splash out, you might as well go all the way.