Web Meeting Software

[JakeAdkins]

Has anyone used a good web meeting software? I just had a web meeting and it was horrible. I used Microsoft Live Meeting. It was not good but OK when I was showing the powerpoint, but when I was showing models it was awful. Kept locking up the refresh was bad. Any suggestions?

 

[SomptingGuy]

We use genesys for our meetings. It seems ok. The moderator can show his/her desktop to a web audience pretty well and the audio is always good. There is some latency, but no locking.

- Steve

 

[JakeAdkins]

Even when showing models and assemblies?

 

[IRstuff]

I think we've used the Oracle one, which appears to be generally OK. However, if the presenter's screen resolution is higher than that of the recipient, the software does not correct for it, and the recipient may not see all that's being presented.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[SomptingGuy]

Jake,

Most of our meetings are discussing the content of (choke) PowerPoint slides, not trying to show real programs running. I guess if the program has to refresh the screen dozens of times (as they do), no web meeting app will suffice.

- Steve

 

[jhardy1]

We also use Genesys. I have just hosted a session where we were demonstrating a "live" simulation model, which used simple icon-based 2D graphics moving around the screen. Latency was a bit of an issue for the remote users - they could see the animation effects, but they were apparently only getting screen refreshes every half second or so, rather than "live" animation etc, and their screen would continue to animate for a couple of seconds after we halted the animation on the host computer.

Another problem was the issue of different screen resolutions - the audience was watching on a laptop with a lower screen resolution than our host computer, so they had to pan around to be able to see our whole application window. nevertheless, we were able to demonstrate what we needed to.

I'm not sure what would happen with live video or complex 3D graphics etc.

It's quite likely that bandwidth of both the host and the audience is part of the issue, as well as the capacity of the Genesys system as a whole. Having said that, both the host and the audience were on fast broadband connections, so I suspect that our experience is typical of what is attainable in the "real world".

 

[KENAT]

Jake, depending what you were doing with it, creating some kind of animation of the models and imbedding this in powerpoint might work better rather than being in the (I assume) CAD package.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[GregLocock]

It certainly is possible to share complex models during a net meeting, we used to do it between Oz and Dearborn. However that was over our internal web, the bandwidth is pretty spendy.

It might be worth considering altair hyperplayer models, they are small and fast compared with the source data, but they are dumb models, you can't switch bits on and off.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[ajack1]

We have a couple of customers that use Go to my PC. It is pretty slick while working with models, but like everything I assume does have some issues with screen resolution, graphic cards etc.

It also does not have audio but that is easily overcome and they do offer a 30 day free trail, so you can see for yourself prior to buying it.

https://www.gotomypc.com/en_GB/entry.tmpl?Action=rgoto&_sf=2

 

[PatCouture]

I never used it but I heard Webex is pretty good.

Patrick

 

[mcgyvr]

GoToMeeting is used by Autodesk all the time for online demos,etc... Works great for sharing/showing 3d models,etc...

 

[raynjer]

We use WebEx Meet-Me-Now to do demonstrations, online training, and support of the mold quoting software we sell. We are often using 3D models, rotating, sectioning, etc and there is seldom an issue with viewing.
This has worked very well for us, even though we are using the 'lite' version.
There may be cheaper alternatives out there though that work just as well.

 

[trainguy]

GoTo Meeting - awesome, and 50$/month.

Can you beat that?

tg

 

[MagMike]

We've been using GoToMeeting for about a year now and are very happy with it. I've had to display some pretty complex models, with magnetic field contour plots and GoToMeeting worked without any problems.

I've participated with WebEx teleconferences and they work smoothly too.

Mike

 

[rmw]

Where I work we use Webex for most meetings. While a lot of the results of model work is shown, normally it is just PPT slide screenshots of the results. For peer to peer meetings, we use Sametime by Lotus. I shared a screen with a draftsperson way far away the other day and I didn't see any problem with the models he was showing me for drawings he was working on for me.

rmw

 

[richkeogh]

TurboVNC is free and will work pretty well showing CAD/openGL images from a remote station.