Advanced videocommunications with stereoscopy and individual perspectives

Basic standards for videoconferencing services were specified several years ago and the European Videoconferencing Service (EVS) was launched in 1989. However, the uptake of videoconferencing services was less enthusiastic than predicted by some experts. Apart from high costs and low availability, one of the reasons for the poor uptake might be that some aspects of face-to-face meetings cannot be represented sufficiently well through the use of standard videoconferencing equipment. Considering this, a research project was initiated to investigate the advantages of new technologies such as stereoscopic video in videoconferencing services in terms of telepresence. A communication system is said to have a higher degree of telepresence the more it gives the distributed participants a feeling of sharing space with their remote partners. This paper deals with the benefits of stereoscopic image representation and individual perspective in interpersonal communications applications.