Networked VR: State of the Art, Solutions, and Challenges

Abstract

The networking of virtual reality applications will play an important role in the emerging global Internet of Things (IoT) framework and it is expected to provide the foundation of the expected 5G tactile Internet ecosystem. However, considerable challenges are ahead in terms of technological constraints and infrastructure costs. The raw data rate (5 Gbps–60 Gbps) required achieving an online immersive experience that is indistinguishable from real life vastly exceeds the capabilities of future broadband networks. Therefore, simply providing high bandwidth is insufficient in compensating for this difference, because the demands for scale and supply vary widely. This requires exploring holistic solutions that exceed the traditional network domain, and integrating virtual reality (VR) data capture, encoding, network, and user navigation. Emerging services are extremely inefficient in terms of mass use and data management, which significantly reduces the user experience, due to their heuristic design choices. Other key aspects must be considered, such as wireless operation, ultra-low latency, client/network access, system deployment, edge computing/cache, and end-to-end reliability. A vast number of high-quality works have been published in this area and they will be highlighted in this survey. In addition to a thorough summary of recent progress, we also present an outlook of future developments in the quality of immersive experience networks and unified data set measurement in VR video transmission, focusing on the expansion of VR applications, security issues, and business issues, which have not yet been addressed, and the technical challenges that have not yet been completely solved. We hope that this paper will help researchers and developers to gain a better understanding of the state of research and development in VR.