Gazing into the future of eye contact

Humans need eye contact. It can make people feel closer, more honest, and more respected. When people share eye contact, their brains show similar activity, which helps them bond and understand each other. Eye contact also helps people focus better and remember more during conversations.

Eye contact is a human need. But it also offers big business benefits. 

Brain scans show that eye contact activates parts of the brain linked to reading others’ feelings and intentions, including the fusiform gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala. These brain regions help people figure out what others are thinking or feeling, which we all need for trusting business and work relationships.

A century and a half ago, all business meetings and work-related conversations with co-workers took place in person, face-to-face. Then phones entered the workplace. Email took off in the 1990s. Skype started video calls in 2003 and Zoom launched in 2011. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced nearly all work online, and rocketed Zoom into prominence. In 2025, most business meetings now happen via video calls.

From an eye contact perspective, video calls seem like they should be better than old-school phone calls. But they’re not. 

Standard Zoom and other video calls make real eye contact impossible. The camera sits above or beside the screen, so when you look at someone’s face on your screen, you are not looking into the camera. If you look into the camera to simulate eye contact, you can’t see the other person’s face or reactions. This means both people always appear to be looking away, even if they are trying to pay attention. It is not just awkward — it changes how people feel and behave.

On a phone call, you don’t have visual information about the other person’s attention. But on a video call, the visual information tells you they’re not paying attention to you, even when they are. 

Over the decades, we’ve slowly lost the benefits of eye contact, including better honesty, trust, bonding, focus, and memory.

But what technology has taken away, technology is bringing back.

HP Dimension

The world recently took two big leaps forward in the quest for remote eye contact. The first such advance comes from HP and Google.

HP unveiled its new HP Dimension system at InfoComm 2025 this week, bringing Google’s Beam technology — once called Project Starline — to businesses for the first time.

The HP Dimension costs $25,000. The Beam service itself has a separate fee, but Google has not yet announced the price.

The system uses Google Beam’s AI video model, which relies on six cameras, a spatial audio setup, and adaptive lighting to turn regular video calls into 3D meetings. The 65-in. display shows people in life-like size, color, and depth, tracking head movements and running at 60 frames per second. This lets users make that all-important eye contact and also see small cues from subtle facial expressions, making meetings feel more real. Users have described the effect as so real it feels like you could reach out and grab an object shown on the screen.

Google is also working on speech translation for Beam, which will let people talk in different languages and still understand each other in real-time, keeping their voice and tone. Beyond that, it’s also working with partners like Diversified and AVI-SPL to bring Beam to more companies. Big names like Deloitte, Salesforce, Citadel, NEC, Hackensack Meridian Health, Duolingo, and Recruit plan to use the technology.

But wait, you say. $25,000? Are you nuts?

The truth is, however, that the price is a steal. In fact, the technology will pay for itself in mere months for many companies, provided one condition is met: if the realism and eye contact provided by the technology replaces expensive business travel.

Because what’s truly nuts is how much money businesses spend now on business travel for employees and executives to go somewhere else to have meetings.

Here’s my back-of-the-napkin calculation: If we conservatively estimate that an average domestic business trip costs $354 (for airfare, Uber, hotel, meals, and incidentals) and an average international trip costs $2,600 — and assume a business traveler makes half their trips domestically and half internationally — then it takes just 17 business trips to reach $25,000.

When you look at it that way, it not only makes sense for smaller businesses to buy an HP Dimension, it would even make sense to buy one for each employee who travels on business. The catch, of course, is that both meeting attendees would need one.

There are cheaper alternatives.

Apple Vision Pro

At its developers conference earlier this week, Apple announced the release of VisionOS 26, which includes an upgraded Spatial Personas feature for Apple Vision Pro.

Personas are 3D avatars that appear during FaceTime calls and virtual meetings. The update dramatically improves the realism of face-to-face calls via Apple Vision Pro.

Initially, Personas were mocked for their horrible appearance, often showing issues like holes in the back of heads, hair lacking volume, and stiff movements. Now, they appear more refined and expressive. When users smile or laugh, their teeth, cheeks, and eyebrows move “more naturally,” a stark contrast to their previous stiffness. Apple attributes these advances to its “industry-leading volumetric rendering and machine learning technology.”

The process for capturing these Personas still involves 3D scanning the user’s face with the Vision Pro’s cameras. Capturing is the same, but the result is now much better.

According to Apple, these enhanced Personas are designed to foster more meaningful connections. They allow users who both have an Apple Vision Pro headset to interact during FaceTime calls as if they are together in the same room.

Most importantly, they enable eye contact. While up to five participants can engage with Spatial Personas in a call, people not using a Vision Pro or who haven’t activated the feature will still appear in a traditional 2D tile view.

Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500, which is far cheaper than HP Dimension — though still far more expensive than many users are willing to pay. But returning to my napkin, if Apple Vision Pro replaces one average international business trip and two or three domestic ones, it pays for itself.

Better yet, there are even cheaper options for eye contact.

Eye contact camera hardware

The iContact Camera Pro is a 4K webcam that uses a retractable arm that places the camera right in your line of sight so that you can look at the person and the camera at the same time. (You can tilt the arm so the camera is between the other person’s eyes or just to the side of their head at eye level.) It lets you adjust video and audio settings in real time. It’s compact and folds away when not in use. It’s also easy to set up with a USB-C connection and works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other major platforms.

Center Cam is another option; it’s a small webcam that hangs in the middle of your screen and uses “eye-to-eye” HD camera tech to make calls feel more like real conversations.

Another option is the PlexiCam, a clear, adjustable mount that lets you put any webcam right in the middle of your screen, so you’re always looking at the person you’re talking to. It works with any camera and any monitor, and you can move it anywhere on your screen. (The latest PlexiCam Mag2 uses a magnetic base for even more flexibility.)

Eye contact software

Finally, there’s Casablanca AI, software that fixes your gaze in real time during video calls, so it looks like you’re making eye contact even when you’re not. It works by using AI and GAN technology to adjust both your eyes and head angle, keeping your facial expressions and gestures natural, according to the company. 

Casablanca AI runs on Windows and Macs with Apple Silicon. If you look away from the screen, Casablanca doesn’t force fake eye contact; your gaze shifts naturally, just like in person. It costs $7 a month, $20 a year, or $200 for a lifetime license.

The same caveat applies to software-only solutions as it does to hardware ones: Both parties need the same stuff for actual eye contact, which is, by definition, mutual.

Don’t look now, but the future of remote eye contact is already here. And it will get ever better over time. Best of all, when technology replaces business travel at your company, even the most expensive solutions will pay for themselves in the blink of an eye.