Gaze, atten­tion, and eye con­tact are impor­tant aspects of face to face com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but some sub­tleties can be lost in video­con­fer­enc­ing because par­tic­i­pants look at a sin­gle pla­nar image of the remote user. We pro­pose a low-cost cylin­dri­cal video con­fer­enc­ing sys­tem that pre­serves gaze direc­tion by pro­vid­ing per­spec­tive-cor­rect images for mul­ti­ple view­points around a con­fer­ence table. We accom­plish this by using an array of cam­eras to cap­ture a remote per­son, and an array of pro­jec­tors to present the cam­era images onto a cylin­dri­cal screen. The cylin­dri­cal screen reflects each image to a nar­row view­ing zone. The use of such a sit­u­at­ed dis­play allows par­tic­i­pants to see the remote per­son from mul­ti­ple view­ing direc­tions. We com­pare our sys­tem to three alter­na­tive dis­play con­fig­u­ra­tions. We demon­strate the effec­tive­ness of our sys­tem by show­ing it allows mul­ti­ple par­tic­i­pants to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tell where the remote per­son is plac­ing their gaze.

The move­ment of human gaze is very impor­tant in a face to face con­ver­sa­tion. Some of the qual­i­ty of that move­ment is lost in video con­fer­enc­ing because the par­tic­i­pants look at a sin­gle pla­nar image of the remote per­son. We use an array of cam­eras to cap­ture a remote user, and then dis­play video of that per­son on a spher­i­cal dis­play. We com­pare the spher­i­cal dis­play to a face to face set­ting and a pla­nar dis­play. We demon­strate the effec­tive­ness of the cam­era array and spher­i­cal dis­play sys­tem in that it allows observers to accu­rate­ly judge where the remote user is plac­ing their gaze.