Interacting with a gaze-aware virtual character

In this paper, the authors present the user’s attentive state interpreted through eye gaze while interacting with a virtual character. The underlying narrative in which the approach was tested is based on a classical XIXth century psychological novel: Madame Bovary, by Flaubert. The authors connected a remote eye tracker with a dynamic 3D world. An empirical study revealed individual user experiences and behavioral patterns. In particular, they identified two different groups of users: one that was showing natural eye gaze behaviors with rhythmic eye gaze shifts between the characters’ eyes, face and the scene and another one permanently staring at the character. Interestingly, the group with more natural behaviors towards the character also rated the experience with the system more positively.