Cloud gaming relies upon smooth delivery of frames and low delay for a good player Quality of Experience (QoE). While playout buffering has long been used in traditional streaming systems -- e.g., streaming video and VoIP -- to smooth out variations in delay and available bandwidth, algorithms for playout buffering for cloud game streams are under-researched. In particular, QoE models for cloud-based game streams differ from those for traditional media, suggesting algorithms that have been widely used and proposed may need to be adjusted for cloud gaming. This paper investigates playout buffer policies on cloud gaming QoE by employing a trace-driven simulation framework that allows for a head-to-head comparison of policies. By integrating established QoE models, our study quantifies how these technical parameters affect perceived gaming quality. Our results reveal that the effectiveness of a buffer policy is highly dependent on the network conditions, with adaptive strategies showing potential benefits in environments with high jitter, while more conservative policies may suffice under stable network conditions.

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See also:

• Josh Allard, Andrew Roskuski and Mark Claypool. Measuring and Modeling the Impact of Buffering and Interrupts on Streaming Video Quality of Experience, In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia (MoMM), Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 30 - December 2, 2020. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/buff-int/

• Mingzhe Li, Mark Claypool and Robert Kinicki. Playout Buffer and Rate Optimization for Streaming over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMCCAP), Volume 5, Number 3, August 2009. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/buffer/