Continuous media adaptation for mobile computing using coarse-grained asynchronous notifications

The recent spreading of public wireless infrastructures allowing for higher data rates makes mobile communications networks a very attractive platform for distribution of multimedia content. At the same time, limited resources in public wireless networks pose serious questions on how to bring services and multimedia to terminals to be used anywhere. Content adaptation is required in order to bring the best perceptual experience to the end-user while optimizing resources usage. Unfortunately, content adaptation is very difficult to achieve and is usually related to band-width availability only. In this paper we propose to extend existing service provisioning architectures with an asynchronous notification system to keep up-to-date the whole set of user profile data during service provisioning. We argue that the average multimedia application behavior, still adhering to a model based on a very limited number of choices, is not affected by increased reaction time and coarse-grained parameters responsivity. Furthermore, introduction of asynchronous notifications will enable service providers to adapt content considering any parameter characterizing the user profile, not just available bandwidth. © 2005 IEEE

Distributed context monitoring for continuous mobile services

Context-awareness has been recognized as a very desirable feature for mobile internet services. This paper considers the acquisition of context information for continuous services, i.e., services that persist in time, like streaming services. Supporting context-awareness for these services requires the continuous monitoring of context information. The paper presents the extension of a middleware architecture for the reconciliation of distributed context information to support context-aware continuous services. The paper also addresses optimization issues and illustrates an adaptive video streaming prototype used to test the middleware. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing

GHItaly'17: 1st Workshop on Games-Human Interaction

The 1st Workshop on Games-Human Interaction (GHItaly ‘17) aims at bringing together scholars and industry practitioners to establish a common ground on the topic

MAP-MIND: An Offline Algorithm for Optimizing Game Engine Module Placement in Cloud Gaming

Online gaming has seen a significant surge in popularity, becoming a dominant form of entertainment worldwide. This growth has necessitated the evolution of game servers from centralized to distributed models, leading to the emergence of distributed game engines. These engines allow for the distribution of game engine modules (GEMs) across multiple servers, improving scalability and performance. However, this distribution presents a new challenge: the game engine module placement problem. This problem involves strategically placing GEMs to maximize the number of accepted placement requests while minimizing the delay experienced by players, a critical factor in enhancing the gaming experience. The problem can be formulated as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model, which provides an optimal solution but suffers from high computational complexity, making it impractical for real-world applications. To address this challenge, this paper introduces two novel heuristic algorithms, MAP-MIND and MAP-MIND*. The MAP-MIND algorithm demonstrates superior performance, achieving near-optimal delay and more than 92% GEM request acceptance in the worst heterogeneous scenarios. The MAP-MIND* algorithm, while slightly under-performing MAP-MIND in terms of delay, proves to be significantly faster, making it a viable alternative for real-world applications with equal GEM request acceptance. The trade- off between the two algorithms offers a flexible approach to GEM placement, balancing performance and computational efficiency

Revamping Cloud Gaming with Distributed Engines

While cloud gaming has brought considerable advantages for its customers, from the point of view of cloud providers, multiple aspects related to infrastructure management still fall short of such kind of service. Indeed, differently from traditional cloud-ready applications, modern game engines are still based on monolithic software architectures. This aspect precludes the applicability of fine-grained resource management and service orchestration schemes, ultimately leading to poor cost-effectiveness. To mitigate these shortcomings, we propose a Cloud-Oriented Distributed Engine for Gaming (CODEG). Thanks to its distributed nature, CODEG is capable of fully exploiting the resource heterogeneity present in cloud data centers, while providing the possibility of spanning its service on multiple network layers up to the edge clouds

GHItaly18: Game-human interaction in research

The 2nd Workshop on Games-Human Interaction (GHItaly18), held jointly with AVI 2018 (International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces), maintained its original spirit. Its aim was twofold. The first goal was to offer a common ground for scholars and practitioners either working on the topic or interested in approaching it. The second, long term goal was to establish a meeting venue to be held on a regular basis for researchers in a field that is still too underestimated in Italy, and that still presents high fragmentation also at international level. Of course, the intended scope of the workshop is not limited to a national event. Rather, the hope is to extend the international participation, to support wider collaboration in research activities and projects. GHItaly18 extended the scope of GHItaly17 (held in conjunction with CHItaly17 in Cagliari) by focusing on the aspects related to the design and development of visual interfaces, a highly relevant issue for creating an engaging and satisfactory user experience in deeply multidimensional artefacts such as video games. Moreover, as for the former edition, the application range of video games that the workshop invited to explore had to be intended in its broadest sense: both entertainment and applied finalities

GHItaly18 - 2nd international workshop on games-human interaction

This short paper presents the second international workshop on Games-Human Interaction - GHItaly 2018. The goal of this series of workshops is to focus on advanced aspects of the design and development of game interfaces. The quality of the resulting interaction is a highly relevant issue for creating an engaging and satisfactory user experience, especially when deeply multidimensional artefacts such as video games are concerned

Seamless Nomadic System-Aware Servants

The growing diffusion of wireless technologies is leading to deployment of small-scale and location dependent information services (LDISs). Those new services call for provisioning schemes that are able to operate in a distributed environment and do not require network infrastructure. This paper describes an approach to a service-oriented middleware which enables a mobile device to be aware of the surrounding environment and to transparently exploit every LDIS discovered in the coverage area of the hosting wireless network. the paper introduces seamless nomadic system-aware (SNA) servant. SNA servants run on mobile devices, discover LDISs and are not associated with any specific service. The paper also describes the key features for the SNA servants implementation and for rendering them interoperable and cross-platform on, at least,.NET and JVM frameworks