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Comment by christopherslee | Hacker News Reader

because it's very awkward that the camera is not in the same place you are looking. You're looking at the monitor, when the webcam is most often above the monitor. So all the viewer (and vice versa) sees is you looking down.

It's not "eye-to-eye" conversation. If you want the other person to feel like they are looking at you, you have to look dead into the camera. But then you miss out on seeing the other person.

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There's another solution to this, besides the ones mentioned by others in this thread, which someone can probably do themselves. Just look at the design of the teleprompter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teleprompter_schematic.svg

Errol M0rris used a device with a similar design, called the "Interrotron", so that when he interviewed people, they'd have direct eye contact both with him and the viewers: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/eyecontact/interrotron.ht...

Picture of it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkottke/1526404040/

This should really make the design clear: http://www.whiterabbitdesigncompany.com/Miscellaneous/images...

All you need besides a screen and webcam is a half-silvered mirror, good lighting and an encasing so that the webcam is in the dark, besides light from straight ahead through the mirror. I've been meaning to make this myself, since I spend hours everyday on video chat, but haven't gotten to it yet.

This.

Video chat fails at providing an emotional connection because of this. It leaves you feeling like you are talking past someone. It's a fundamental problem with the technology that can't really be solved unless we literally put a camera in the middle of the screen.

Is this possible?

Stuck on the iPad so I'm not hunting a citation but yes, there was an article going around about a year ago of a prototype of such a screen.

I believe Apple actually filed a patent for a screen with an embedded camera. I don't know how technologically/economically feasible it would be to actually make and integrate into devices.

Article: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/08/apple_files_pa...

Patent: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...

There have been several attempts at solving this, including one by Microsoft[1] which involves putting a camera on either side of the screen and synthesizing a new image that allows eye contact.

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6726...

It's not a guaranteed solution but for laughs I took some typical webcam headshots and made some very minor tweaks to the eyes (mostly iris position) that makes it look like direct eye contact. Given what apps like Word Lens are doing, I can't see why this couldn't become a built-in feature, much like head tracking has on some cameras.

In my experience you can mitigate this effect quite a bit by placing the "loopback" video window of yourself (with Skype) directly under the camera at the top of the screen while also full screening the incoming video.

I do not understand. You stare at yourself when you videochat?

You could find eyes on the face of the speaker and alter the image of them to look like he looks directly at the camera.

This should be interesting task especially when algorithm does not do this 100% perfect.

This kind of goes away on the phone though.

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