We consider the question of how to best achieve the perception of eye contact when a person is captured by camera and then rendered on a 2D display. For single subjects photographed by a camera, conventional wisdom tells us that looking directly into the camera achieves eye contact. Through empirical user studies, we show that it is instead preferable to {\em look just below the camera lens}. We quantitatively assess where subjects should direct their gaze relative to a camera lens to optimize the perception that they are making eye contact.
@article{arxiv.2404.17104,
title = {Don't Look at the Camera: Achieving Perceived Eye Contact},
author = {Alice Gao and Samyukta Jayakumar and Marcello Maniglia and Brian Curless and Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman and Aaron R. Seitz and Steven M. Seitz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.17104},
year = {2026}
}