iTrace: Click-Based Gaze Visualization on the Apple Vision Pro

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mehmedova, Esra, Berrezueta-Guzman, Santiago, Wagner, Stefan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mehmedova, Esra
Berrezueta-Guzman, Santiago
Wagner, Stefan
author_facet Mehmedova, Esra
Berrezueta-Guzman, Santiago
Wagner, Stefan
contents The Apple Vision Pro is equipped with accurate eye-tracking capabilities, yet the privacy restrictions on the device prevent direct access to continuous user gaze data. This study introduces iTrace, a novel application that overcomes these limitations through click-based gaze extraction techniques, including manual methods like a pinch gesture, and automatic approaches utilizing dwell control or a gaming controller. We developed a system with a client-server architecture that captures the gaze coordinates and transforms them into dynamic heatmaps for video and spatial eye tracking. The system can generate individual and averaged heatmaps, enabling analysis of personal and collective attention patterns. To demonstrate its effectiveness and evaluate the usability and performance, a study was conducted with two groups of 10 participants, each testing different clicking methods. The 8BitDo controller achieved higher average data collection rates at 14.22 clicks/s compared to 0.45 clicks/s with dwell control, enabling significantly denser heatmap visualizations. The resulting heatmaps reveal distinct attention patterns, including concentrated focus in lecture videos and broader scanning during problem-solving tasks. By allowing dynamic attention visualization while maintaining a high gaze precision of 91 %, iTrace demonstrates strong potential for a wide range of applications in educational content engagement, environmental design evaluation, marketing analysis, and clinical cognitive assessment. Despite the current gaze data restrictions on the Apple Vision Pro, we encourage developers to use iTrace only in research settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_12268
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle iTrace: Click-Based Gaze Visualization on the Apple Vision Pro
Mehmedova, Esra
Berrezueta-Guzman, Santiago
Wagner, Stefan
Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The Apple Vision Pro is equipped with accurate eye-tracking capabilities, yet the privacy restrictions on the device prevent direct access to continuous user gaze data. This study introduces iTrace, a novel application that overcomes these limitations through click-based gaze extraction techniques, including manual methods like a pinch gesture, and automatic approaches utilizing dwell control or a gaming controller. We developed a system with a client-server architecture that captures the gaze coordinates and transforms them into dynamic heatmaps for video and spatial eye tracking. The system can generate individual and averaged heatmaps, enabling analysis of personal and collective attention patterns. To demonstrate its effectiveness and evaluate the usability and performance, a study was conducted with two groups of 10 participants, each testing different clicking methods. The 8BitDo controller achieved higher average data collection rates at 14.22 clicks/s compared to 0.45 clicks/s with dwell control, enabling significantly denser heatmap visualizations. The resulting heatmaps reveal distinct attention patterns, including concentrated focus in lecture videos and broader scanning during problem-solving tasks. By allowing dynamic attention visualization while maintaining a high gaze precision of 91 %, iTrace demonstrates strong potential for a wide range of applications in educational content engagement, environmental design evaluation, marketing analysis, and clinical cognitive assessment. Despite the current gaze data restrictions on the Apple Vision Pro, we encourage developers to use iTrace only in research settings.
title iTrace: Click-Based Gaze Visualization on the Apple Vision Pro
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12268