Abstract
Many desktop videoconferencing systems are ineffective due to deficiencies in gaze awareness and sense of spatial relationship. Previous work to correct this has employed special hardware. At Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, we have been working on a software-only approach. Heads and eyes in the video are tracked using computer-vision techniques, and the tracking information is transmitted along with the video stream. Receivers take the tracking information corresponding to the video to place the head and eyes in a virtual 3D space such that gaze awareness and a sense of space is provided.