Stereoscopic Avatar Interfaces : A study to Determine what Effect, if any, 3d Technology has at Increasing the Interpretability of an Avatar's Gaze into the Real-World

An approach to displaying avatar interfaces monoscopically such as the Turning, Stretching and Boxing (TSB) technique (a combination of three graphical processes) has been shown to improve the communication efficiency of avatars by increasing a user's ability to interpret an avatar's gaze direction through the delivery of a sustained 3D illusion of the avatar on a standard 2D display. A reasonable question to ask about this approach is whether or not the improvement in interpretability can be matched or surpassed by using a standard 3D display technology (stereoscopic) with or without the fore-mentioned approach? This paper presents an experiment that pits the TSB technique against a standard 2D display using 3D technology in order to answer this question. An analysis of these results shows that, by itself, 3D display technology does not have any influence on the ability of viewers to accurately interpret an avatar's gaze direction. Furthermore, the combination of 3D display technology with the TSB technique does not result in any noticeable improvement.