VRVS Etiquette

Things to do before your first VRVS meeting

• Make sure that your mike and sound settings are all working properly before coming to the meeting. It is often a good idea to try a quick VRVS session with another user in the coffee meeting  room before hand.
• It's worth while to get a have a good mike and a decent sound card  so that the other people present at the meeting don't have to listen to buzzing. Also a poor mike can stop you from being understood.
• The best setup to have is a mike and a set of headphones to avoid serious echoing during a meeting.

During the meeting

• There is no need to ask "Can you hear me?" before beginning to speak if you have tested your setup before hand. In the event that something has gone wrong it will be immediately obvious to other people in the meeting and someone will surely tell you that you can't be heard.
• If you have a tendency to pause frequently for short periods of time it is best to turn off the "Suppress Silence" option (rat option) in the options menu. Often short pauses will cause the first syllable of the word after the pause to be cut out. In the event that your mike is poor make sure to shut off Suppress Silence.
• Be certain that the output from your mike is not going back to your own speakers ( a certain disaster ). There is usually a setting in your machine volume control to avoid this.
• There is no feedback canceling mechanism in VRVS, therefore if your mike and someone else's are on at the same time there will be feedback resulting in a rather incomprehensible stream of gibberish. 
• Often times it is necessary to make sure it's clear who a question is addressed to when speaking to a group since eye contact is not a luxury afforded by VRVS. When this is unclear the result can be two people responding at once, and with the feedback the result is even more incomprehensible than usual. 
• Use the audio meters to judge your voice volume. The goal is to get as far into the green as possible without going red.
• When typing the a URL into the chat window the full URL is required including the http://
• If you are using someone else's machine to join in the meeting make sure to announce yourself.

Ian Gable 05/29/2001 08:29 PM