UI Interaction Using Gaze

UI interaction using gaze lets you aim at a UMG widget panel by looking at it, then actuate a button, checkbox, or slider by triggering a hand’s select input. The panel itself is the same interactable widget you build for poke and ray interactions. Enabling gaze does not require a second widget component or a second Slate hierarchy.

Gaze is a distance targeting method for a UMG panel that is already set up as an interactable widget. The widget still spawns the same UIsdkRayInteractable that hand rays and controller rays use, and gaze targets that same interactable through the gaze targeting component on the rig. The result is a single widget with one interactable graph that can be driven by poke up close, by ray at mid-range, and by gaze plus a select input at a distance.

Two settings decide whether a widget participates in gaze. A project-level Allow Gaze By Default switch sets the baseline for the whole project. A per-widget GazePolicy on the UIsdkInteractableWidgetComponent can override that baseline in either direction, so a widget can opt in or out of gaze without changing the project default. The gaze targeting component on the rig then decides whether a hit resolves to the whole panel or to a single sub-widget under the gaze.

For the underlying rig setup, the gaze targeting component, and the project-level toggles, see Gaze Interaction.

Gaze reuses the UIsdkRayInteractable that the widget already exposes for ray interaction. On UIsdkInteractableWidgetComponent, bCreateRayInteractable must be true so that a ray interactable is spawned, and its collider must block the gaze trace channel (default ECC_Visibility). If the widget does not spawn a ray interactable, gaze has nothing to target.

For the base widget setup, see Interactable Widgets.

GazePolicy on UIsdkInteractableWidgetComponent controls whether the ray interactable that the widget spawns is eligible for gaze targeting. The setting is applied to that spawned ray interactable and is relevant only when bCreateRayInteractable is true.

UPROPERTY(Category = "InteractionSDK|Interactable|Ray Interactable",
          EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Meta = (ExposeOnSpawn = true))
EIsdkGazePolicy GazePolicy = EIsdkGazePolicy::UsePluginSetting;

EIsdkGazePolicy has three values:

The editor hides Allow Gaze By Default until you turn on Gaze Enabled. If you do not see the setting, enable gaze first at:

Project Settings > Plugins > Meta XR - InteractionSDK

TargetingMethod on UIsdkGazeTargetingComponent (EIsdkGazeTargetingMethod, default ConeCast) governs how gaze resolves a hit to a target.

A widget region is a rectangular target associated with a clickable sub-widget in a UWidgetComponent. During ConeCast, gaze targeting uses these regions to identify the intended sub-widget.

Non-widget surface interactables use a strict raycast under both targeting methods. Only widgets combine the gaze cone with the widget region system to pick a sub-widget.

If you are building your own custom targeting system, see Widget Regions for optional implementation details.

While gaze mode is on, hand and controller ray interactors are disabled. A select input from either hand actuates the region interactor owned by the gaze rig. That input is the hand rig’s select action, which for tracked hands is a pinch. The first hand to select owns the interaction until it releases, and the other hand cannot steal it mid-select.

When gaze mode is off, the widget reverts to being driven by the normal hand and controller ray interactors, using the same UIsdkRayInteractable and the same widget event pipeline.

Now that you know how UMG widget panels become gaze-targetable with Interaction SDK, continue on to the following guides: