Video calling has become standard in the worlds of business and communication but there are a few hurdles from making video calls seem as realistic as face to face interaction. One major flaw of video calling is that while users look at their screens to see the person or persons they are calling, their camera is above or below their screen. This creates an awkward experience reminiscent of someone staring at your forehead while talking to you. In conjunction with hardware on Microsoft’s Kinect, software named CatchEye creates eye contact over video calls.
CatchEye uses the Kinect to determine where you are on the screen, then adjusts the image on the other end of the video call in real time. The Kinect is required for this because it records depth to the video stream. Despite the Kinect’s underwhelming performance in the gaming world, it provides a great experience on Skype. It already adds the feature of following users when they move around without having to physically move the camera and now with CatchEye can create eye contact with other video callers.
You can check out more about CatchEye, including how to use it with your Kinect for Windows device, on Channel 9 in the link below.
