First audio, then video
Not good enough. I want a full telepresence robot with Oculus Rift interface. I want to be able to thump tables, throw chairs, and enjoy the full CEO experience.
Monkey suit optional.
Accurate eye-to-eye contact in a videoconference, a feature of high end systems as well as any phone or tablet with a front-facing camera, is a problem for laptop users, because the camera is almost slightly off-direction from the image. Hence, as any Skype user knows, there's an unfortunate effect in which people are looking …
"Not good enough. I want a full telepresence robot with Oculus Rift interface."
That's why I have opaque adhesive tape stuck over the lens on my laptop.
Frankly, there's not much that's more annoying than this inane automatic tracking stuff. If I'm forced to use video on Skype then off goes auto-tracking and I use an external camera that I can point anywhere.
Auto-tracking may be useful in certain surveillance environments but I'm damned if I want it on IM.
Some thoughts:
Will the eyeballs be rotated too? If not, less than ideal solution.
What happens with my relatives who never remember to place their video window near their camera? Go to Warp 9?
In case of frequent loss of face-lock, will the face judder back and forth, a la Max Headroom? Now THAT would be cool!
My thought exactly - the position of the head isn't the problem, it's the distribution of whites around the eyes that you use, subconsciously, to determine if someone's looking at you.
It's why a face in a painting or photo like the Mona Lisa can follow you around the room with its eyes, no matter how far to the side of the picture you are. The aspect of the face is irrelevant. If the model looked at the camera (or painter), the picture will look at you. If not, it won't.
Just a few more tweaks to remove blemishes, tattoos, scars, receding hairline etc and it will be the perfect tool for communicating with potential partners on the internet.
Personally, I'm fed up of living in a world of lies and distortions but it should go well with windows where those folders aren't really folders and your 'administrator' account doesn't really have admin' priveleges and rights.
"It doesn't sound as if this will stop (presumably bottle-fed as babies) adolescents from staring at the cleavage of women they are skyping with. "
There's a simple solution for that one - the woman in question should tilt the camera up a bit. If I wore a shirt as low in the front as most women seem to they'd be going ew at the hairy man boobs, so why not put on something a little higher cut for work in the interests of equality?
Then again those same adolescents won't have the camera pointing at their face anyway.