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Software Brings Eye Contact To Video Chat, With a Little Help From Kinect

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-makes-you-look-really-funny-when-it-bugs-out dept.

Zothecula writes "Skype has been around for ten years now. Once a science fiction dream, the video calling service has 300 million users making two billion minutes of video calls a day. One problem: most of them can't look each other in the eye. Claudia Kuster, a doctoral student at the Computer Graphics Laboratory ETH Zurich, and her team are developing a way to bring eye contact to Skype and similar video services with software that alters the caller's on-screen image to give the illusion that they're looking straight at the camera."

11 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Sometimes the easy way is the better way by 3D-nut · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not put a half-silvered mirror (plate beamsplitter) at a 45 degree angle to the screen, a piece of black velvet beyond the beamsplitter as a light trap, and point the camera so it sees your face reflected in the glass? Like a teleprompter.

    1. Re:Sometimes the easy way is the better way by a_nonamiss · · Score: 2

      Terrific idea, but you'd have a pretty hard time getting that setup into a laptop bezel. Video-conferencing didn't really seem to catch on en masse until the cameras came built into every piece of hardware sold. As a dedicated device, I could see this idea working really well, but I don't think people are willing to sacrifice price and portability just to be able to see someone they're talking to. Of course, there could be exceptions, such as when people are doing high-value business transactions, where eye contact can make or break a deal.

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
    2. Re:Sometimes the easy way is the better way by Platinumrat · · Score: 2

      Why not put 4 cameras in each corner and use software to combine the image in such a way that the senders image is in the centre?

  2. Re:there's always looking right at the camera by Atzanteol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then you're not looking the other person in the eyes. Hence no "eye-contact."

    --
    "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

    - Charles Darwin
  3. Don't mess with the eyes by Russ1642 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're putting out software that changes what your eyes look like so that it looks like you're not looking up a little bit. This will not work. It will make people's eyes look wrong and creepy. We are perfectly attuned to looking at eyes and anything that's a bit off will get noticed immediately. Start by fixing people's teeth or something but not the eyes.

  4. Re:Aversion by hedwards · · Score: 2

    I disagree, not looking at people in the eye during chat isn't weird at all. It's the way that video chat is done.

    By permitting the computer to change your eyes, you solve one problem, while taking away the meaning with which your eyes communicate with people. Suddenly, you can't just roll your eyes without telling the computer that you want to roll your eyes as the computer isn't going to know that it should break eye contact.

    If you happen to live in a culture where eye contact is maintained through out, that might be fine, but for those of us that are used to maintaining eye contact for short periods and breaking it as a part of effective communication, this is just going to make that more complicated.

  5. Re:NO WAR FOR BIG OIL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Calling Obama "the left" is a joke.

    Signed,
    a Canadian.

  6. Re:there's always looking right at the camera by asylumx · · Score: 4, Funny

    If both people are only looking at the camera, why bother even displaying a picture at all? Nobody is looking at it... Except the NSA perhaps.

  7. Re:Looking someone straight in the eye: eye roll by optikos · · Score: 2

    It is quite natural for me to roll my eyes upward, when I must suffer fools. This software will inhibit my far-end image from doing so.

  8. Which is false reality.. by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most people do not make Eye contact when talking, people look at the other persons mouth mostly aiming the eyes at the center of the face. direct eye contact is seen as agressive even in the human species.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  9. Link to paper and video by Nova77 · · Score: 2

    It's a 2012 siggraph (Asia) paper. Here's the link with the video.

    http://graphics.ethz.ch/publications/papers/paperKus12.php