Level of detail based network adapted synchronization for cloud gaming

Abstract

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