Abstract
In Hybrid Cloud Gaming (HCG), as long as the graphical assets are available at the client side, rendering can be performed locally. However, if the client is not able to render all the frames in time, this may result in the frame rate to drop under the target value. This paper presents an Asset-based frame-level hybrid graphics/video rate control method for HCG, referred to as AHCG, which aims at improving the Quality of Experience (QoE) of players by tapping into the available processing power at the client side, while keeping a steady frame rate for thin clients and taking full advantage of the user’s tolerable delay. In the proposed client/server model, graphics data are intercepted and streamed in an asset-based approach. This approach handles the rate control issue per asset which is defined to be 3D object model data, textures, and shader programs. Rendering a frame on the client side not only maintains original quality for that frame, but it also reduces bandwidth requirements of the entire service by reusing the same assets for different frames. In the proposed method, if the accumulated rendering delay at the client side violates the tolerable delay set by the user, video streaming is used to compensate for the client device’s lack of processing power. Furthermore, quality fluctuation between graphics and video frames is addressed to provide a seamless experience when switching between graphics and video streaming. Several objective and subjective tests are conducted and the experimental results show a 20-fps increase in frame rate while maintaining a minimum value of 58 fps, with a minimum of 0.25 units improvement in the pooled standard deviation of SSIM values, compared to existing HCGs. Also, the subjective tests suggest an average 5.62 percent improvement in MOS compared to best HCG methods.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Huang, C.-Y., Chen, K.-T., Chen, D.-Y., Hsu, H.-J., Hsu, C.-H.: GamingAnywhere: the first open source cloud gaming system. ACM Trans. Multimed. Comput. Commun. Appl. 10(1s), 25 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1145/2537855
Mishra, D., Zarki, M.E., Erbad, A., Hsu, C.-H., Venkatasubramanian, N.: Clouds + games: a multifaceted approach. IEEE Internet Comput. 18(3), 20–27 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2014.20
Shea, R., Liu, J., Ngai, E.C., Cui, Y.: Cloud gaming: architecture and performance. IEEE Netw. 27(4), 16–21 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1109/MNET.2013.6574660
Ahmadi, H., Tootaghaj, S.Z., Hashemi, M.R., Shirmohammadi, S.: A game attention model for efficient bit rate allocation in cloud gaming. Multimedia Syst. 20(5), 485–501 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-014-0381-1
Cuervo, E., Wolman, A., Cox, L.P., Lebeck, K., Razeen, A., Saroiu, S., Musuvathi, M.: Kahawai: high-quality mobile gaming using GPU offload. In: Proceedings of the 13th annual international conference on mobile systems, applications, and services, Florence, Italy 2015, pp. 121–135. Association for Computing Machinery (2015)
Semsarzadeh, M., Yassine, A., Shirmohammadi, S.: Video encoding acceleration in cloud gaming. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 25(12), 1975–1987 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2015.2452778
Nave, I., David, H., Shani, A., Tzruya, Y., Laikari, A., Eisert, P., Fechteler, P.: Games@large graphics streaming architecture. In: 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics, 14–16 April 2008, pp. 1–4 (2008)
Barman, N., Martini, M.G., Zadtootaghaj, S., Möller, S., Lee, S.: A comparative quality assessment study for gaming and non-gaming videos. In: 2018 Tenth international conference on quality of multimedia experience (QoMEX), Cagliari, Italy, 29 May–1 June 2018 2018, pp. 1–6. IEEE (2018)
Zadtootaghaj, S., Schmidt, S., Möller, S.: Modeling gaming QoE: towards the impact of frame rate and bit rate on cloud gaming. In: 2018 Tenth international conference on quality of multimedia experience (QoMEX), 29 May-1 June 2018, pp. 1–6 (2018)
Chan, K.L., Ichikawa, K., Watashiba, Y., Putchong, U., Iida, H.: A hybrid-streaming method for cloud gaming: to improve the graphics quality delivered on highly accessible game contents. Int. J. Serious Games (2017). https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v4i2.163
Nan, X., Guo, X., Lu, Y., He, Y., Guan, L., Li, S., Guo, B.: Delay–rate–distortion optimization for cloud gaming with hybrid streaming. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 27(12), 2687–2701 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2016.2595330
Nan, X., Guo, X., Lu, Y., He, Y., Guan, L., Li, S., Guo, B.: A novel cloud gaming framework using joint video and graphics streaming. In: 2014 IEEE international conference on multimedia and expo (ICME), 14–18 July 2014, pp. 1–6 (2014)
Mohammadi, I.S., Ghanbari, M., Hashemi, M.R.: An API-level frame workload model for real-time rendering applications. https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.12278666.v1 (2020)
Sun, L., Osman, H.A., Lang, J.: A hybrid remote rendering method for mobile applications. Multimedia Tools Appl. 79(5), 3333–3358 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7306-0
Tan, K.T., Ghanbari, M., Pearson, D.E.: An objective measurement tool for MPEG video quality. Signal Process. 70(3), 279–294 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-1684(98)00129-7
Union, I.T.: Subjective evaluation methods for gaming quality. In: Telecommunication Standardization Sector of ITU, p. 34 (2018)
Liao, X., Lin, L., Tan, G., Jin, H., Yang, X., Zhang, W., Li, B.: LiveRender: a cloud gaming system based on compressed graphics streaming. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 24(4), 2128–2139 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2015.2450254
Chen, D.-Y., El-Zarki, M.: A framework for adaptive residual streaming for single-player cloud gaming. ACM Trans. Multimed. Comput. Commun. Appl. 15(2s), 23 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3336498
Illahi, G., Siekkinen, M., Masala, E.: Foveated video streaming for cloud gaming. In: 2017 IEEE 19th international workshop on multimedia signal processing (MMSP), 16–18 Oct 2017, pp. 1–6 (2017)
Ke, Y., Ye, G., Wu, D., Zhou, Y., Ngai, E., Hu, H.: GECKO: gamer experience-centric bitrate control algorithm for cloud gaming. In: Image and graphics, pp. 325–335. Springer, Cham (2017)
Wang, P., Ellis, A.I., Hart, J.C., Hsu, C.: Optimizing next-generation cloud gaming platforms with planar map streaming and distributed rendering. In: 2017 15th Annual workshop on network and systems support for games (NetGames), 22–23 June 2017, pp. 1–6 (2017)
Hegazy, M., Diab, K., Saeedi, M., Ivanovic, B., Amer, I., Liu, Y., Sines, G., Hefeeda, M.: Content-aware video encoding for cloud gaming. In: Paper presented at the proceedings of the 10th ACM multimedia systems conference, Amherst, Massachusetts
Illahi, G.K., Gemert, T.V., Siekkinen, M., Masala, E., Oulasvirta, A., Ylä-Jääski, A.: Cloud gaming with foveated video encoding. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3369110
Nguyen, D.V., Tran, H.T.T., Thang, T.C.: A delay-aware adaptation framework for cloud gaming under the computation constraint of user devices. In: MultiMedia modeling, pp. 27–38. Springer, Cham (2020)
Molnar, S., Cox, M., Ellsworth, D., Fuchs, H.: A sorting classification of parallel rendering. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 14(4), 23–32 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1109/38.291528
Akenine-Möller, T., Haines, E., Hoffman, N.: Real-time rendering, 4th edn. CRC Press (2018)
SLI. https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/technologies/desktop/sli.htm (2004). Accessed Feb 2020
CrossFire Technology. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/crossfire (2005). Accessed February 2020
Hoppe, H.: Progressive Meshes. In: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques 1996, pp. 99–108. Association for Computing Machinery
Sullivan, G.J., Wiegand, T.: Rate-distortion optimization for video compression. IEEE Signal Process. Mag. 15(6), 74–90 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1109/79.733497
Ghandi, M.M., Ghanbari, M.: A Lagrangian optimized rate control algorithm for the H.264/AVC encoder. In: 2004 International conference on image processing, 2004. ICIP '04., Singapore, Singapore October 2004, pp. 123–126. IEEE
Schmidt, S., Zadtootaghaj, S., Möller, S.: Towards the delay sensitivity of games: there is more than genres. In: 2017 Ninth international conference on quality of multimedia experience (QoMEX), 31 May–2 June 2017, pp. 1–6 (2017)
Lee, H.-J., Chiang, T., Zhang, Y.-Q.: Scalable rate control for MPEG-4 video. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 10(6), 878–894 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1109/76.867926
Ma, S., Wen, G., Yan, L.: Rate-distortion analysis for H.264/AVC video coding and its application to rate control. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 15(12), 1533–1544 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2005.857300
Sabet, S.S., Schmidt, S., Zadtootaghaj, S., Griwodz, C., Moller, S.: Towards applying game adaptation to decrease the impact of delay on quality of experience. In: 2018 IEEE international symposium on multimedia (ISM), 10–12 Dec 2018, pp. 114–121 (2018)
Sabet, S.S., Schmidt, S., Griwodz, C., Möller, S.: Towards the impact of Gamers' adaptation to delay variation on gaming quality of experience. In: 2019 Eleventh international conference on quality of multimedia experience (QoMEX), 5–7 June 2019, pp. 1–6 (2019)
Li, C., Wu, D., Xiong, H.: Delay–power-rate-distortion model for wireless video communication under delay and energy constraints. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 24(7), 1170–1183 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSVT.2014.2302517
Boyd, S., Vandenberghe, L.: Convex optimization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2004)
Eu, Y.X., Tanu, J., Law, J.J., Ghazali, M.H.B., Tay, S.S., Ooi, W.T., Bhojan, A.: SuperStreamer: enabling progressive content streaming in a game engine. Paper presented at the proceedings of the 24th ACM international conference on Multimedia, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
APITrace. https://github.com/apitrace (2019). Accessed 19 Apr 2020
DirectX Graphics and Gaming | Microsoft Docs. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/directx (2018). Accessed 24 Feb 2020
team, x.: x264. https://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html (2004). Accessed 11 Aug 2019
Zhou, W., Bovik, A.C., Sheikh, H.R., Simoncelli, E.P.: Image quality assessment: from error visibility to structural similarity. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 13(4), 600–612 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2003.819861
Zadtootaghaj, S., Schmidt, S., Barman, N., Möller, S., Martini, M.G.: A classification of video games based on game characteristics linked to video coding complexity. In: 2018 16th Annual workshop on network and systems support for games (NetGames), 12–15 June 2018, pp. 1–6 (2018)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mohammadi, I.S., Ghanbari, M. & Hashemi, M.R. A hybrid graphics/video rate control method based on graphical assets for cloud gaming. J Real-Time Image Proc 19, 41–59 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11554-021-01159-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11554-021-01159-y