The growth in cloud computing and network connectivity brings the opportunity for cloud-based game systems where players interact through a lightweight client that only displays rendered frames and captures input, while the heavyweight game processing happens on the cloud server. Compared to traditional game systems, cloud-based game systems present challenges in handling network latency and bitrate requirements. This work uses Drizzle, a custom cloud-based game system, to evaluate: 1) time warp to compensate for latency, and 2) graphics streaming to reduce network bitrates. A 30-person user study shows time warp mitigates the effects of latency on player performance, and system experiments show graphics streaming provides bitrate reductions compared to the video streaming typically used by commercial cloud-based game systems.

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• Paper (camera copy): pdf
• Paper (draft, slightly longer): pdf
• Slides: pptx

See also:

• Meng Luo and Mark Claypool. Uniquitous: Implementation and Evaluation of a Cloud-based Game System in Unity, In Proceedings of the IEEE Games, Entertainment, Media Conference (GEM), Toronto, Canada, October 2015. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/uniquitous/