Motion is enough: How real-time avatars improve distant communication

Abstract

Thanks to the maturity of motion tracking technologies, it became easy and inexpensive to use avatars that reflect the user's facial and body movements in real time. There is a possibility that those real-time avatars can serve as a substitute for videos in distant communication. We conducted an experiment to observe differences between video chat and voice chat, and examined whether avatar chat can produce the same differences. In the experiment the subjects watched a conversation partner's video, avatar, photo, or nothing when speaking to the partner. Since the video and avatar delivered the partner's motion while the video and photo delivered the partner's appearance, we were able to observe the effects of the motion and appearance separately. As a result, we found that presenting the motion via a video or an avatar increased the degree of the smoothness of speaking to the partner.