Current cloud gaming systems have very strong requirements in terms of network resources. For pervasive gaming in various environments like at home, hotels, internet cafes, or area with limited or unstable network access, it is beneficial to avoid the necessity of having a costly steady fast speed internet connection to be able to run these cloud games.We present a network aware adaptation technique based on the level of detail (LoD) approach in 3D graphics. It maintains a bidirectional multi-level quality of service for game entities at runtime, lessening the game's communication cost when it notices a decrease in network resources and maintains an optimal communication frequency otherwise. It therefore reduces the impact of poor and unstable network parameters (delay, packet loss, jitter) on game interactivity while improving user's quality of experience (QoE). The evaluation of our approach through a pilot experiment shows that the proposed technique provides a significant QoE enhancement.

Video games are considered as a major sector of popular entertainment and digital culture. With the arrival of cloud gaming, more video games become ubiquitous as they can be hosted on centralized servers and accessed through the Internet by thin clients with limited capabilities. Cloud computing within the game context has attracted significant attention due to its principal characteristics of scalability, availability and computational power. However, current cloud gaming systems have very strong requirements in terms of bandwidth and network resources. Thus, when devices have limited bandwidth and/or people are located in areas with limited network connectivity, they can not take advantage of these services. This paper presents an adaptation technique inspired by the level of detail (LoD) approach in 3D graphics. It is based on a cloud gaming paradigm for the minimization of the effect of poor network parameters (delay, loss, jitter) in order to enhance the game interactivity and improve the player quality of experience (QoE). A pilot experiment has been carried out to evaluate this approach through a game prototype. The results of this experiment show that the LoD based adaptation in cloud gaming provides a significant QoE enhancement on poor or congested networks. Index Terms-cloud gaming, quality of experience, level of detail, client-server game

With the arrival of cloud technology, game accessibility and ubiquity have a bright future; Games can be hosted in a centralize server and accessed through the Internet by a thin client on a wide variety of devices with modest capabilities: cloud gaming. However, current cloud gaming systems have very strong requirements in terms of network resources, thus reducing the accessibility and ubiquity of cloud games, because devices with little bandwidth and people located in area with limited and unstable network connectivity, cannot take advantage of these cloud services. In this paper we present an adaptation technique inspired by the level of detail (LoD) approach in 3D graphics. It delivers multiple platform accessibility and network adaptability, while improving user's quality of experience (QoE) by reducing the impact of poor and unstable network parameters (delay, packet loss, jitter) on game interactivity. We validate our approach using a prototype game in a controlled environment and characterize the user QoE in a pilot experiment. The results show that the proposed framework provides a significant QoE enhancement.

No abstract