Is daylight our friend or enemy in Teams Rooms design?
What’s the impact on the VC camera? How should we handle natural light in hybrid spaces?
As part of a series of short articles, Visual Displays' Director Greg Jeffreys discusses all things AV…
The quick answer is that it falls in the enemy category. The AVIXA/IES lighting guide for VC is clear on this: VC cameras perform best if lighting is within a single colour temperature band. Daylight has a much higher colour temperature than room lighting, so can potentially have a negative impact on your VC camera’s video output.
The way our eyes work is not in line with how we perceive how they work. Human eyes have to work within a massive dynamic range greater than 1,000,000 to 1. Human visual response is logarithmic; we can only perceive a change in light levels when they double or halve. VC cameras don’t work in the same way and poor light control can ruin the VC experience for remote participants.
In any UX study of built environment use, proximity to windows is always at or near the top of the list. They tend not to drill down on whether it’s about seeing outside or the natural light, though. Either way, this has to be acknowledged if thinking more deeply on the subject.
In many cases, if you think transmitting good quality video to remote hybrid session participants is important, then room blinds are more often required than realised. This is a growing realisation for our clients and we are being asked for this more often now.
Posted: 14th February 2022