VR companies are integrating iris scanner technology with new VR headsets. The integration can help personalize user experiences. It can help companies understand whether people engage with an advertisement. Tracking your eyes and face will give VR companies unprecedented insight into your emotions. A company has also filed a patent for a technology that adapts media content based on users’ facial expressions. Iris and facial recognition give companies unprecedented insight into your emotions.
Of course, eye-tracking data can help companies determine what you’re considering purchasing. Maybe you look at an expensive digital fedora for a few extra seconds, and the company sends you a coupon code an hour later. However, measuring your emotions opens up a new world of targeted advertising.
One of the companies will use the VR headset’s Iris ID system to authorize payments and to automatically log into a given user’s online accounts when the user puts on the headset. The iris scanner will function through the same camera sensors the device will use for foveated rendering, a technique in which scenes outside of a user’s focus are rendered graphically at a lower resolution. That, in turn, requires gaze tracking, in which the sensors dynamically assess where the user is looking at any given moment.