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Comment by cousin_it | Hacker News Reader

I think the lack of eye contact is a big problem, possibly the biggest. Right now, when you look at the camera, the other person sees you looking them in the eyes. And when you look them in the eyes, they see you looking somewhere else. And when you move around, the other person's gaze doesn't track your position in space. The body language dimension of communication gets all messed up.

Here's an example of tech that could fix this, using gaze tracking and 3D reconstruction to make the screen behave as a stable "artificial window" from your room into the other person's room, changing the view as you move your head. That way you can look at the other person and make eye contact naturally: https://www.fastcompany.com/90498000/move-over-zoom-this-mag...

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NVIDIA just announced this AI-based video conference system that addresses the problem of gaze correction and 3D reconstruction, as well as a bunch of other stuff.

https://developer.nvidia.com/maxine

The 3D reconstruction piece is interesting -- it ends up being a video compression algorithm as well. It replaces a video codec with a GAN algorithm. It takes an initial high-res snapshot your your face (keyframe), maps out a set of keypoints which gets transmitted to the other end. The algorithm at the destination uses a GAN to reconstruct the face. Because keypoints (vectors instead of raster) are an order of magnitude smaller than images, this results in a very high level of compression and very low latency video conferencing on low-bandwidth connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqmMnjJ6GEg

This idea is not unlike Apple's Memoji which uses facial recognition to create an animated emoji, except this reproduces real faces over the wire.

I usually make the zoom window small and place it right under the camera so looking at the person is indistinguishable from looking at the camera. This doesn't solve the problem of making eye contact with individuals though, you can only make eye contact with the current speaker.

I couldn't agree more. It's the biggest problem that I experience, and certainly the lowest-hanging fruit for a technical solution. Surely the current vendors know this and are working on it? Is there something that makes it harder than it seems?

Errol Morris's device for this is named 'Interrotron' so maybe it's a careful-what-you-wish-for situation:

Q: The Interrotron? Did you make up the name?

A: No, it was named by my wife, Julia Sheehan. She liked the name because it combined two important concepts — terror and interview.

That's a pun on the name

> I think the lack of eye contact is a big problem, possibly the biggest.

Interestingly, we do audio-only calls in my company and I don't miss the video at all. Maybe that's because the implementations I've seen so far have all the issues listed in this thread and if it the video was actually good enough it would prove to be an enhancement.

We need Errol Morris's "Interrotron" but for Zoom - https://www.errolmorris.com/content/eyecontact/interrotron.h...

Output zoom or whatever through a teleprompter setup

Newer phones will have a selfie camera positioned behind the screen. I guess one solution for video calls is to make sure the other person's eyes overlap the camera of your phone (using eye tracking and a perspective transform). Then, as long as both people keep eye contact with each other, the phones can be moved and rotated freely. I wonder if this exists already.

On that note, why on earth does Google meet always put other people's webcams at the bottom of the screen? Such a dumb design decision.

I’d wager that most people tend to look at their own video more the the other person’s. And if that’s true, their layout choice would make it appear more natural for the other party.

If they ever look!

Seems unlikely in the tech biz where eye contact is rare and usually uncomfortable.

Wouldn't under-display cameras be a better solution?

Dell tried this with one of their models with ultra-mega thin bezels.

It just mostly shows the inside of your nose to people. Dunno how that got through QA.

That was lower altitude then screen. Parent meant behind the screen.

They, at least on a laptop, make for really unflattering angles.

I had a laptop from work with a webcam beneath the display and hated it. Never used it as I never wanted to force people to look up my nose. When it was refresh time, the guys were telling me all about how much more RAM and processing power I was getting, all I asked was "Where's the webcam?" (It was up top, they'd fixed it.)

I think they mean literally underneath the screen, like what phone manufacturers are trying to achieve to avoid having a black dot or notch.

Not having the camera physically at the bottom of the screen (closer to the keyboard rather than at the top) like I believe the Dell XPS 13 has (or had?).

If you're at home, put your laptop on a stand (they're cheap) and then the middle of the screen is at the middle of your eye line.

I don't know about you all, but I have plenty of thick technical books that make excellent laptop stands.

Sounds awful - I think this was one of the highest-rated 'niggles' of laptop design in one of the review sites, a really poor perspective looking up at people. Or if the laptop is on a stand, possibly just showing the top of your head.

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