How do Star Wars hologram communications work?

Question

Starting at 2:46 in Clones Wars season 2 episode 7 we see both ends of a hologram communication.

I've always wondered how people somehow manage to maintain eye contact while using holograms to communicate since often, as in this case, each are viewing images of the other that greatly vary in size. Obi-wan Kenobi and Ki-Adi-Mundi are in a large room looking down on a 2-3 foot image of Luminara Unduli. Master Unduli however is holding a mobile jedi holoprojector looking down at 1 foot images of Kenobi and Mundi. How can they both be looking down at projections less than half the height of an average humanoid while still maintaining eye contact with the person on the other end?

Stranger still, at 3:16 when Anakin Skywalker enters the room, joining the other two Jedi, we see the 2-3 foot image of Unduli in the center of the room turn her entire body about 90 degrees to face Skywalker. Then Mundi speaks up at 3:25, prompting the small Unduli image to do a 180 degree turn to face Mundi. However we then immediately see at 3:29 that she never needed to turn since they've only been two little images in her hand all along. It makes no sense for Unduli to turn right and left to face people she's essentially holding in her hand. Curiously, Skywalker's image is absent from Unduli's mobile holoprojector even though we saw her turn to face him. Did he race out of the room the nanosecond he finished talking?

Just imagine they're using some type of video chat to communicate and you start to realize that things aren't adding up. Can someone explain to me how communications via hologram are supposed to work?

I'm probably placing this under way too much scrutiny but I'm a Star Wars fan who's stuck at home sick and very bored.

Answer 1

I don't have any canon references, but there's certainly no reason Star Wars technology can't do some fancy alterations of holographic images. My projector knows it's in my hand and I'm looking down at it, so it will automatically modify the image to look up at me. Of course, if the other guy looks away from his projection of me, my image of him will also look away.

It's also possible to make more extreme exaggerations. While she's talking to Anakin, everyone else's holograms could show her physically turning her body away from them since it might be hard to register eye contact on images that small. When she turns to Mundi with her eyes and addresses him, his hologram shows the same physical turning.

I used a real life voice chat program (Mumble or Teamspeak, I believe), that did something similar. You could place other people on the program in a 2D space around you, then it would play back with positional audio. You could also set it to autoplace them in a circle or semi-circle around you. Then when Bob talks, you hear him from your left. When Mary talks, she's a bit in front and to your right. When Susie talks, she's behind you. Etc.

The hologram program could do the same thing, having the projection turn to imaginary positions of each participant. Each user can have different settings, so one person sees everyone in one spot facing the user, while another person sees the people spread around them facing whoever they talk to.