EVALUATION OF A VIRTUAL SPACE TELECONFERENCING SYSTEM WITH EYE CONTACT

In virtual space teleconferencing, the sense of eye contact between tw o parties who are addressing each other is important in giving third p arties the sense that they are all in the same room. The sense of obse rving a face-to-face interaction between two parties in a virtual spac e teleconferencing session was compared with that in ordinary teleconf erencing by determining how well the facial orientations of two partie s continued to give the sense of eye contact when they changed their p ositions. In the 2-D representation of the meeting, even though the ca meras were placed so as to maximize agreement between the gazes and fa cial orientations of two speakers, third party viewers felt that there was some loss of the sense of face-to-face interaction when the speak ers changed position. A 3-D representation of the meeting gives a bett er sense of agreement between facial orientations.