MSI CES 2016: GT72S Tobii Eye-Tracking Laptop & The Compact Vortex With Dual GTX 980 GPUs

Ever wanted the camera in a game to follow your eyes, instead of relying on your mouse? Eye tracking is one of those odd technologies that crops up every now and then when it comes to games. MSI is experimenting with such a feature by utilizing eye tracking tech from Tobii, and integrating it into one of its new laptops, the GT72S Tobii.

Tobii’s eye tracking has been used before with the SteelSeries Sentry Gaming Eye Tracker, and was put to use in the latest Assassin’s Creed Rogue video game. MSI is the first company to integrate the tech into a laptop. Other games such as DayZ and Elite: Dangerous will be integrating support for the eye tracking tech soon.

Beyond gaming, Tobii’s eye tracking integrates with Microsoft’s Windows Hello, for a smart login using your face. Traditional, this used only a webcam, but can now use other information provided by depth-sensing cameras, and now eye tracking.

While full system specs are not quite available yet, the details we have are still comprehensive for the MSI GT72S Tobii:

• Windows 10
• Intel Core i7-6820HK 2.9-3.8GHz
• NVIDIA GTX 980M With 8GB GDDR5
• 17.3-inch IPS Panel @ 1920×1080
• 32GB DDR4 @ 2133MHz
• 256GB SSD (NVMe M.2 PCIe) + 1TB SATA HDD
• SteelSeries Backlit Keyboard
• Killer Gaming Network E2400 NIC + Killer N1525 Wireless
• 1080p Webcam

No doubt, these are ‘up-to’ specifications, but it’s still an impressive feature set. While no price was given, the rather high-end specs plus the Tobii eye tracker (which itself cost $150-$250), we’re easily talking a $3000+ laptop.

MSI Vortex

In other MSI related news, it showed off a very compact cylindrical PC, that’s little over a foot tall and contains two GTX 980 GPUs in SLI. These are not the GTX 980M chips, but actual desktop parts (confirmed through NVIDIA’s Driver Control Panel). While the form factor is familiar, MSI did say that the GPUs in this compact beast will be upgradeable in the future (should the format take off).

The MSI Vortex contains a quad-core Intel Skylake processor as well, but the possibility of adding an 8-core Haswell processor later. It won’t be released until much later this year, by which time an 8-core equivalent Skylake may be available, but that’s just pure conjecture at this point.

The system makes use of something MSI calls 360-degree Silent Storm Cooling, which is a fancy way of saying it uses a fan at the top to push air through the entire PC, and out the bottom, cooling everything inside. How big the fan is, dust filters, and other questions like that will have to be put on hold, as we don’t have those details yet.

While the MSI Vortex is no NUC, it’s certainly a lot more powerful, and compact enough to be tucked away somewhere without anyone noticing… although, with that much processing power under the hood, it’s probably not a quiet system, even if the GPUs are mobile based. We’ll be keeping an eye on the MSI Vortex and the GT72S as they get released.