Implementation issues regarding eye gaze in synthetic faces

The aim of this study is to investigate people's sensitivity to directional eye gaze, with the longterm goal of improving the naturalness of animated agents. Previous research within psychology have shown the importance of eye gaze in social interactions, and should therefore be vital to implement in virtual agents . In order to test whether we have the appropriate parameters needed to correctly control gaze in the talking head, and to evaluate users' sensitivity to these parameters, a perception experiment was performed. The results show that it is possible to achieve a state where the subjects perceive that the agent looks them in the eyes, although it did not always occur when we had expected.