Multiparty videoconferencing at virtual social distance

This paper describes the design and implementation of MAJIC, a multi-party videoconferencing system that projects life-size video images of participants onto a large curved screen as if users in various locations are attending a meeting together and sitting around a table. MAJIC also supports multiple eye contact among the participants and awareness of the direction of the participants' gaze. Hence, users can carry on a discussion in a manner comparable to face-to-face meetings. We made video-tape recordings of about twenty visitors who used the prototype of MAJIC at the Nikkei Collaboration Fair in Tokyo. Our initial observations based on this experiment are also reported in this paper.