Exact Eye Contact with Virtual Humans

This paper describes a simple yet effective method for achieving accurate, believable eye contact between humans and computer-generated characters, which to the author’s knowledge is demonstrated here for the first time. A prototype system provides a high-fidelity stereoscopic head-tracked virtual environment, within which the user can engage in eye contact with a nearphotorealistic virtual human model. The system does not require eye tracking. The paper describes design and implementation details, and reports qualitative positive feedback from initial testers.