Hacker News Reader

Comment by jp555 | Hacker News Reader

Why worry about better horse bridles (Webcams) when the automobile is beginning to roll out ($300 PC-free VR)?

VR won't have a picture of your face at all. How does that help with eye contact?

It will (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XcQtoja_Y), and VR already conveys MUCH more of the micro-interactions of being with people that we are unknowingly blind to in Zoom meetings, which is one reason Zoom meetings are so draining.

How? At best it can take pictures of part of your face. And usually there's a screen inside that headset. Don't you have the exact same problem of needing a camera to be in the middle of the screen? But now it's even worse because the other person's eyes could be anywhere on the screen as you move your head.

Edit: Oh, you have a link now. So it's going to render a fake head based on eye tracking? You can do that without VR!

Just added a video explaining one approach being taken - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XcQtoja_Y

And that's over a year ago...

Nothing in that depends on a VR headset. You can do that with a normal webcam. It's a completely orthogonal technology.

You can deliver a complete VR experience with just a normal webcam?

You can deliver a rendered avatar based on facial tracking to remove the "camera in the wrong place" eye contact problems, even with normal screens and cameras.

VR makes things immersive, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to solve the eye contact problem. It's orthogonal.

It's not about just eye contact, but a whole lot of body language that we are totally blind to with a just video of someone who's not even looking at you. This body language is a very important part of communicating and can be mediated with VR.

This blindless in webcam meetings make everyone something like socially "autistic", and is a big part of what can make them much more draining than in-person meetings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com