Keeping seating within the good viewing area or "GVA" ensures everyone can be seen on camera and has a comfortable view of the screens. To calculate the "GVA," we use the horizontal camera field of view, along with the minimum and maximum viewing distances to the screens.
Key Hints
This is a common challenge when designing conferencing rooms. Room capacity might become a trade off, but a poor view can really diminish the experience and effectiveness of video conferencing!
It is important that everyone can be seen on camera to pick up facial expressions and gestures. The closest participants should be placed to ensure they are within the cameras HFOV (Horizontal Field of View).
Key Hints
The field of views for Google Meet cameras are detailed in the camera and audio section
To ensure comfortable viewing of images and content, the distance from the farthest viewer to the screen should be no more than 8x the screen height.
For comfort, the closest viewer should be no closer than 1.5x the screen height.
The horizontal viewing angle to the screen should not exceed 45 degrees. This is measured from the perpendicular of the outer screen edge.
Key Hints
The camera view rule will generally over rule this, but be careful of steeper angles in smaller rooms.
Head to the room designer section for 'Good Viewing Area' examples over a range of occupancies using Google Meet hardware.