Feature Request Detect when VR user looks away from an object?

Hello,

I'm new to unity3d development!

I am building a VR education app for Quest 2 and basically want to detect when a user looks away from an object (count how many times they look away, and start a timer for how long they look away).

I want to store & collect these metrics for analysis (so store them in a database perhaps?) Is this even possible?

Essentially, I want to detect when a user is looking away from the content to see if they are being distracted by the environment etc!

 

could use Vector3.Dot (to check if look away)
https://docs.unity3d.com/2018.4/Documentation/Manual/UnderstandingVectorArithmetic.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3.Dot.html

Or this, if object goes totally outside of view
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnBecameInvisible.html

to save the data..could send using webrequests, if you have server to receive it:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Networking.UnityWebRequest.html

it could be possible to use unity analytics to collect those events, but i don't have experience/info on those..

there used to be heatmaps feature, to see where user visited etc. which sounds like good way to collect view direction data, but i dont know if its still available
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityAnalyticsOverview.html *NOTE: legacy old docs

 

Thank you so much for all the links!

I didn't expect to get a response so fast, thanks for the help mgear!

 

np! also one more simple(st) way:
- raycast or spherecast towards viewing direction from head, see what gets hit. https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.Raycast.html , https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.SphereCast.html

 

Perfect, hopefully this won't be too hard to implement for a newbie.

I have some experience with programming (software dev student), however the unity engine, C# and VR development are all new to me lol