Platform for Distributed 3D Gaming (original) (raw)

Gaming platform for running games on low-end devices

Low cost networked consumer electronics (CE) are widely used. Various applications are offered, including IPTV, VoIP, VoD, PVR and games. At the same time the requirements of computer games by means of CPU and graphics performance are continuously growing. For pervasive gaming in various environments like at home, hotels, or internet cafes, it is beneficial to run games also on mobile devices and modest performance CE devices such as set top boxes. EU IST Games@Large project is developing a new cross-platform approach for distributed 3D gaming in local networks. It introduces novel system architecture and protocols used to transfer the game graphics data across the network to end devices. Simultaneous execution of video games on a central server and a novel streaming approach of the 3D graphics output to multiple end devices enable the access of games on low cost devices that natively lack the power of executing high-quality games.

Distributed video game streaming system for pervasive gaming

This paper presents a new distributed video game streaming system. Newly developed streaming protocols and system architectures enable transfer of the game graphics in real-time across the wired / wireless network. Initial tests have shown that the Games@Large system is capable of running video games of different genres, also including First Person Shooter games that are very popular and usually highly interactive and demanding for high end device performance. Further, the experiments prove that a Games@Large server can be hosted on a single PC and support multiple game executions and streaming with a high visual quality to concurrently connected clients via a wireless / wired network. In particular, a Quality of Service solution is exploited, which improves system performance also in the presence of competing traffic.

The Future of Distributed Gaming: Technical Advantages and User-Centred Design

There is a potential demand for networked interactive media solutions that enable the rendering of PC games on set-top boxes, PDAs or low-cost CE devices. The Games@Large (G@L) project has been developing such a solution that would enable pervasive accessibility of interactive media from low-end devices. This paper describes the G@L framework and presents an experiment comparing user experience of G@L 3D-grahics streaming with a state-of-the-art video streaming solution. Subjects played three games using either G@L or StreamMyGame and self-reports of the acceptability of game graphics were compared. Depending on the game, the image quality of the G@L 3D-streaming protocol was perceived as being as good as or significantly better than state-of-the-art video streaming. Future studies will further explore the advantages and possible limitations of the G@L system with a wider range of games and users.

Evaluation of 3D Applications on Mobile Gaming Consoles Using Client-Server Architecture

2010

Within the mobile devices, the gaming consoles have the greatest graphic processing capabilities, in this category can be find the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Despite their resources there is minimal use of client-server architectures. This potential opens the possibility of using this kind of system where the gaming console acts as a graphic terminal that visualize a 3D world and a desktop computer act as the server to storage the geometric structure of this one. In the mobile gaming consoles class, the platform created by Sony Corporation, called Play Station Portable, has the highest graphic processing potential, and that is why it was chosen for the construction of the system proposed in this work. This paper proposed a client-server system that updates a 3D world in real time and displays it in the graphic terminal, with the geometric information transmitted by the server in response to the user actions, it is also presented a benchmark test to verify the capabilities of gaming consoles.

Games@ Large graphics streaming architecture

2008

In coming years we will see low cost networked consumer electronics (CE) devices dominating the living room. Various applications will be offered, including IPTV, VoIP, VoD, PVR and others. With regards to gaming, the need to compete with PlayStation and Xbox will require a radical change in system architecture. While traditional CE equipment suffers from having to meet low BOM (bill of materials) targets, dictated by highly competitive market and cable companies targeted costs, consoles enjoy superior hardware and software capabilities, being able to offset hardware and BOM costs with software royalties. Exent Technologies is leading the European FP6 Integrated Project Games@Large , whose mission is to research, develop and implement a new platform aimed at providing users with a richer variety of entertainment experience in familiar environments, such as their house, hotel room, and Internet Café. This will support low-cost, ubiquitous gameplay throughout such environments, while taking advantage of existing hardware and providing multiple members of the family and community the ability to play simultaneously and to share experiences. This paper focuses on one of the innovative aspects of the Games@Large project idea-the interactive streaming of graphical output to client devices. This is achieved by capturing the graphical commands at the DirectX API on the server and rendering them locally, resulting in high visual quality and enabling multiple game execution. In order to support also small handheld devices which lack hardware graphics support, an enhanced video method is additionally provided.

Games@Large - a new platform for ubiquitous gaming and multimedia

In coming years we will see low cost networked consumer electronics (CE) devices dominating the living room. Various applications will be offered, including IPTV, VoIP, VoD, PVR and others. With regards to gaming and highly interactive multimedia applications, the need to compete with PlayStation and Xbox will require a radical change in system architecture. The Games@Large Integrated Project’s (IP) mission is to research, develop and implement a new platform aimed at providing users with a richer variety of entertainment experience in familiar environments, such as their entire house, hotel room, cruise ships and Internet Café. This will support ubiquitous gameplay throughout such environments, while taking advantage of existing hardware and providing multiple members of the family and community the ability to play simultaneously and to share experiences. This paper focuses on the most innovative Games@Large ideas, such as multiple games execution on the Games Gateway and delivery of graphic rendering metadata over the network via low latency and low bandwidth Pre-Rendering Protocol. A model of the system architecture is presented and the specific properties of Pre-Rendering protocol are outlined.

A hybrid thin-client protocol for multimedia streaming and interactive gaming applications

Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video - NOSSDAV '06, 2006

Despite the growing popularity and advantages of thin-client systems, they still have some important shortcomings. Current thin-client systems are ideally suited to be used with classic office-applications but as soon as multimedia and 3D gaming applications are used they require a large amount of bandwidth and processing power. Furthermore, most of these applications heavily rely on the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). Due to the architectural design of thin-client systems, they cannot profit from the GPU resulting in slow performance and bad image quality. In this paper, we propose a thin-client system which addresses these problems: we introduce a realtime desktopstreamer using a videocodec to stream the graphical output of applications after GPUprocessing to a thin-client device, capable of decoding a videostream. We compare this approach to a number of popular classic thin-client systems in terms of bandwidth, delay and image quality. The outcome is an architecture for a hybrid protocol, which can dynamically switch between a classic thin-client protocol and realtime desktopstreaming.

Low delay streaming of computer graphics

2008 15th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, 2008

In this paper, we present a graphics streaming system for remote gaming in a local area network. The framework aims at creating a networked game platform for home and hotel environments. A local PC based server executes a computer game and streams the graphical output to local devices in the rooms, such that the users can play everywhere in the network. Since delay is extremely crucial in interactive gaming, efficient encoding and caching of the commands is necessary. In our system we also address the round trip time problem of commands requiring feedback from the graphics board by simulating the graphics state at the server. This results in a system that enables interactive game play over the network.

OLGA: On-Line GAming over Heterogeneous Platforms Thanks to Standard Scalable Content

2000

Most current multi-player 3D games can only be played on a single dedicated platform such as PCs, video-consoles, or (very recently) cell-phones, requir- ing specifically designed content and inter-terminal communication over a predefined network. To over- come these limitations, the OLGA (On-Line GAming) consortium has devised a framework to develop real distributive, multi-player 3D games where scalability at the level

A Case for Peer-to-Peer 3D Streaming

2006

Interactive 3D contents on the Internet have yet become popular due to their large data volume and the limited network bandwidth. Progressive content transmission, or 3D streaming, thus is necessary for real-time content interactions and manipulations. However, the heavy data and processing requirements of 3D streaming challenge the scalability of current client-server-based delivery methods. We propose the use of peerto-peer (P2P) networks to make 3D streaming more scalable and affordable, so that interactive 3D contents may see wider adoptions.