Evaluating QoE in Cloud-Based Virtual Reality Systems: A Pilot Study

The importance of proper human-machine interaction has become increasingly recognized in several sectors, such as industry, health, and education. Extended Reality (XR) technologies are currently being explored to generate innovative interaction techniques and to enhance immersion during HMI. However, solutions involving XR require high computational power, which may affect cost efficiency for large-scale deployment. Cloud computing may be a viable solution for generating XR content - which can be streamed to XR devices - and to enable its use within places were multiple people are connected to the XR the same time (e.g., factory floors were workers use headmounted displays to visualize and interact with the machinery). Nevertheless, the remote generation of XR content faces problems such as the effect of latency upon the system. This article presents a pilot study on the use of cloud-based VR systems to analyze the effect of latency on user-perceived quality of experience (QoE).