Trading off computation for error in providing immersive voice communications for mobile gaming

Abstract

The interactive experiences of players in networked games can be enhanced with the provision of an Immersive Voice Communication Service. Game players are immersed in their voice communication experience as they exchange live voice streams which are rendered in real-time with directional and distance cues corresponding to the users' positions in the virtual game world. In particular, we propose a Mobile Immersive Communication Environment (MICE) which targets mobile game players using platforms such as Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. A computation reduction scheme was proposed in our previous work for the scalable delivery of MICE from a central server. On the basis of that computation reduction scheme, this paper identifies what factors, and to what extent, affect the unacceptable voice rendering error incurred when providing MICE. In the first experimental scenario, we investigate the level of unacceptable voice rendering error incurred in MICE for different avatar densities or avatar population sizes, with a fixed level of processing limit. In the second experimental scenario, we studied the level of unacceptable voice rendering error incurred in MICE for different processing resource limits, with a fixed avatar population size or avatar density. Our findings provide important insights into the planning and dimensioning of processing resources for the support of MICE, with due considerations to the impact on the unacceptable voice rendering error incurred.