Gaze input on Windows 10 for desktop apps

1
votes

I'd like to use gaze tracking, to tinker with new input experiences on Windows desktop. Got excited when it was released with Windows 10 April 2018 update.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/input/gaze-interactions

However, it seems to be a UWP only API. I'd like to use it in a desktop app, so I could recognize gestures and forward them to any app in the system, which UWP can not do yet. I also need an overlay to give user on-screen hints about what he can do, which is also impossible with UWP. Also, I need to be able to track the gaze across all the screens and in other apps.

Is there a way to use these or similar APIs from desktop .NET? Alternatively, can I make an UWP app (no need to publish in Store as of yet), that would have unrestricted capabilities similar to desktop bridge apps?

1
uwpdesktop-bridge
It's new feature in UWP. You could not use these APIs in .NET application. You could make a UWP app and sideload it(no need to publish in Store). - Xie Steven
@XavierXie-MSFT can a sideloaded UWP app run with runFullTrust capability? - LOST
Currently the API requires a CoreWindow and those are not available to runFullTrust processes at this point. The API is still in "preview" since not all the features are finalized yet. - Peter Torr - MSFT
@PeterTorr-MSFT , just wanted to say, that restricting this API to UWP saddens me :( - LOST
@LOST, I understand your frustration. Per the announcements at //build this year, our aim is to get all "modern" features working in Win32 apps as well; it just takes some time. - Peter Torr - MSFT

1 Answers

0
votes

@Lost, as was mentioned the new Windows 10 gaze apis and the gazeinteraction library in the Windows Community Toolkit are currently limited to UWP application development.

However if you do want to experiment with eye tracking experiences in Win32 or WPF applications you could use the eye tracking device manufacturer's SDK which will be a little more work and not have the same cross hardware support, but it would be one way to experiment with the kinds of things that you are interested in.

For example Tobii offers their Core SDK for Win32 and WPF.