Software-Defined Wireless Virtual Reality Gaming on SoftFIRE (SWVR) Experiment by Dozero AB. The real-time Virtual Reality (VR) gaming is becoming a promising but challenging service/application for the next generation of multimedia system. Different VR headsets have been so far developed and advanced in the market, for instance, SONY PlayStation VR, Facebook Oculus RIFT, and HTC Vive. To provide good quality for VR gaming, all of these VR headsets demand for the wired connection to the powerful gaming Personal Computer (PC) or gaming controller (e.g., PS4). This situation creates problems in terms of high hardware requirement and geographical constraint on moving. To overcome these problems, DozeroTech AB has advanced a software backend system, which intends to support the wireless VR gaming over common wireless technologies like, e.g., WiFI, 4G/5G. The underlying idea of Software-Defined Wireless Virtual Reality Gaming on SoftFIRE (SWVR) is to apply the image downscaling and upscaling on the game server and game client, respectively. The goal of this solution is to reduce the high bandwidth for VR gaming, while maintaining the game video quality (e.g., high resolution, low latency) between gaming server (e.g., a PC) and client (e.g., a VR headset). By using the SoftFIRE platform, the performance evaluation of the Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) of the advanced solution in the real SoftFIRE 5G mobile networking is conducted. In the experiment system, we integrate the image downscaling/upscaling method into the open-source cloud gaming system GamingAnywhere (GA), as well as the VR functionality. To the best of our knowledge, there are no similar Research and Development (R&D) efforts done along with such line. Further, the experimental results show that the performance of the system well meet the KPI verification requirements for QoS and QoE. Moreover, the corresponding R&D experience can be shared with the SoftFIRE consortium, and thus contribute to the development of GPU-oriented functionalities for the SoftFIRE platform in the future. Listen to the Dozero interview. The demo of the SWVR experiment is available here. YOU too can exploit and use the SoftFIRE platform for achieving your results. Participate in the SoftFIRE GRAND Challenge
