A Utility-based QoS Model for Emerging Multimedia Applications

Existing network QoS models do not sufficiently reflect the challenges faced by high-throughput, always-on, inelastic multimedia applications. In this paper, a utility-based QoS model is proposed as a user layer extension to existing communication QoS models to better assess the requirements of multimedia applications and manage the QoS provisioning of multimedia flows. Network impairment utility functions are derived from user experiments and combined to application utility functions to evaluate the application quality. Simulation is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed QoS model

Experimental study and modelling of Networked Virtual Environment server traffic

The paradigm of virtual world environment arises as an useful tool in diverse fields such as e-Health or education, where they provide a new way of communication and interaction with end users. Networking capabilities play an important role in these systems, which motivates the study and understanding of the gaming network traffic. The present work focuses on Open Wonderland, a system that provides the basis for the development of Networked Virtual Environments with educational or health purposes. The goal of this paper is defining a testing environment and modelling the behaviour of the outgoing network traffic at the server side.Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo AAL-010000-2012-10Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-0

Qualitative Evaluation of Latency and Packet Loss in a Cloud-based Games

On-demand multimedia services are more popularthan ever and continue to grow. Consumers can now streammusic, movies, television, and video games at the push of abutton. Such services typically require a minimum connectionspeed to support streaming. However, transient network effectssuch as packet loss and delay variation can play a crucial role indetermining the user quality of experience (QoE) in streamingmultimedia systems. This paper will seek to establish thesubjective impact of negative network effects on the userexperience of a popular cloud-based on-demand video gameservice

Quality of experience driven control of interactive media stream parameters

In recent years, cloud computing has led to many new kinds of services. One of these popular services is cloud gaming, which provides the entire game experience to the users remotely from a server, but also other applications are provided in a similar manner. In this paper we focus on the option to render the application in the cloud, thereby delivering the graphical output of the application to the user as a video stream. In more general terms, an interactive media stream is set up over the network between the user's device and the cloud server. The main issue with this approach is situated at the network, that currently gives little guarantees on the quality of service in terms of parameters such as available bandwidth, latency or packet loss. However, for interactive media stream cases, the user is merely interested in the perceived quality, regardless of the underlaying network situation. In this paper, we present an adaptive control mechanism that optimizes the quality of experience for the use case of a race game, by trading off visual quality against frame rate in function of the available bandwidth. Practical experiments verify that QoE driven adaptation leads to improved user experience compared to systems solely taking network characteristics into account

The Effects of Network Latency on Player Gaming Experience

Humans spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games. While playing, network latencies can cause interaction delay between the client and the server and affect players’ gaming experiences. We built two games that isolate two fundamental game actions (shooting and movement) to evaluate how players are affected by network latency. Game statistics were used to evaluate performance, and emotion detection software and a heart rate monitor were used to evaluate players’ stress level during gameplay. Our results from a 36-person user study show that players’ performance decreases as latency increases and players’ stress level increases as latency increases

Size does matter:Effects of in-game advertising stimuli on brand recall and brand recognition

Rapid growth in the global gaming industry has created substantial opportunities for marketers. The potential and effectiveness of in-game advertising have attracted increasing attention from academics.Drawing on product placement literature, this study explores the influence of size (small, large), order (primacy, recency) and level of absorption (low, high) on consumer memory (brand recall and recognition) of well-known brands placed in a racing game. Using a controlled experiment, 285 participants were recruited to play the sports video game Trackmania 2 Canyon. Results indicate a positive effect of size, but order and level of absorption had no effect on brand recall and brand recognition. In particular, large size brands are recalled and recognised significantly better. Findings offer important implicationsfor marketers in a global gaming industry that is steadily growing

The Effects of Latency, Bandwidth, and Packet Loss on Cloud-Based Gaming Services

Network bandwidth increases make cloud-based gaming a promising alternative to traditional gaming. Network latency presents a challenge cloud-based gaming services must overcome to provide a comparable experience to traditional gaming. Measuring the effects of latency on quality of experience and player performance can help understand the capabilities of cloud-based gaming services. We conduct a cloud-based gaming user study, surveying user’s quality of experience and measuring their in-game performance and the services’ network characteristics. Analysis of results show a significant decrease in quality of experience and player performance as latency increases, but latency has little effect on the frame rate or average throughput of cloud-based gaming services