Božo Vukojević¹ (), Svitlana Pinchuk¹, Christian Vater¹; ¹University of Bern, Switzerland

Peripheral vision is crucial in football, where players must monitor movements beyond their direct line of sight (Vater et al., 2019). Traditional perimeter tests fail to be representative for the natural sports environment, leading to a gap in assessing peripheral vision in football. This study evaluates the performance of two eye-tracking systems — Pupil Labs Neon (Field Eye Tracker) and Pupil Labs Core (Lab Eye Tracker)—within a VR setup simulating a football-specific perimeter test. Twenty-two sport science students participated in a controlled, within-subject design experiment, where each completed the test using both eye-trackers in a counterbalanced order. As independent variable, the eccentricity at which peripheral players appear was systematically varied (10 – 110° eccentricity on each side; a full 220° span). VR environment was built using Unreal Engine 5. Key performance metrics included reaction time and accuracy in detecting peripheral stimuli. Additional variables of head orientation and body movements were controlled with a 14-camera Optitrack system as well as the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) indices with Movisens EcgMove4 device. It was predicted that the Pupil Labs Neon will have higher accuracy than Pupil Labs Core due to unobstructed design. No differences in reaction time or HRV were expected. Results showed that the Pupil Labs Neon significantly outperformed the Pupil Labs Core in terms of accuracy (F(3,60)=71.68, p<.001), with a large effect size η² =0.582, indicating a notable decline in accuracy as eccentricity increased, particularly for stimuli beyond 80 degrees of eccentricity (p<.01), with no differences at lower degrees of eccentricity. No significant differences in reaction time or HRV metrics were observed between the two systems. These findings suggest that the design of the eye trackers, which minimizes peripheral obstructions, enhances accuracy in football-specific tasks, making it a superior choice for sports applications requiring peripheral vision assessments.

Acknowledgements: Project funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant Number 211220)