From jpierce@cs.cmu.edu Fri May 8 20:50:38 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id UAA29546 for ; Fri, 8 May 1998 20:50:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (jKhQZVS32xFYjJId2NnBAq1E7LH6ssDJ@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id UAA05548 for ; Fri, 8 May 1998 20:50:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu (UX2.SP.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.198.102]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA32193 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Fri, 8 May 1998 17:50:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199805090050.RAA32193@wheaten.hitl.washington.edu> Received: from ASYNC6-CS1.NET.CS.CMU.EDU by ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu id aa24789; 8 May 98 20:49 EDT X-Sender: jpierce@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 20:47:43 -0400 To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu From: Jeff Pierce Subject: Virtual video conferencing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: RO Note that spatializing the audio can be done without using video (or virtual video) conferencing. I actually talked to Alan Kay about this a few weeks ago: they're adding support for spatialized audio conferencing (without video) to Squeak. Note that if you just assign arbitrary positions to the participants you don't even need tracking. I would argue that the biggest win (at least with current technology) you can get from virtual video conferencing is eye contact, something that's tricky to approximate with most current video conferencing systems. Plus you might be able to play some neat tricks using point to point rather than broadcast audio - think about inferring asides and whispers based on distance and orientation relative to other speakers. Jeff At 04:24 PM 5/8/98 -0700, Mark Billinghurst wrote: >I agree it's difficu;t to supply all spatial cues we have in face to face >collaboration. But right now video conferencing provides almost no spatial >cues. However if you added spatial audio you could enhance the >collaboration significantly - think of the last time you had a multiparty >phone call with 5-10 people. It's impossible to discriminate between >speakers. However is the audio was distributed about you in space then you >can pick out individual speakers more easily. To do this you only need to >track head orientation. So even though it would be very difficult to >simulate face-to-face collaboration in a VE - we can achieve much better >then traditional video conferencing with simple approximations ..