Measuring the Latency of Cloud Gaming Systems
Abstract
Cloud gaming, i.e., real-time game playing via thin clients, relieves players from the need to constantly upgrade their computers and deal with compatibility issues when playing games. As a result, cloud gaming is generating a great deal of interest among entrepreneurs and the public. However, given the large design space, it is not yet known which platforms deliver the best quality of service and which design elements constitute a good cloud gaming system.
This study is motivated by the question: How good is the real-timeliness of current cloud gaming systems? To address the question, we analyze the response latency of two cloud gaming platforms, namely, OnLive and StreamMyGame. Our results show that the streaming latency of OnLive is reasonable for real-time cloud gaming, while that of StreamMyGame is significantly longer with identical screen resolutions, given that StreamMyGame is running on an Intel Core i7 desktop PC. We believe that our measurement approach can be generally applied to PC-based cloud gaming platforms, and that it will further the understanding of such systems and lead to improvements.
Citation
Kuan-Ta Chen, Yu-Chun Chang, Po-Han Tseng, Chun-Ying Huang, and Chin-Laung Lei, "Measuring the Latency of Cloud Gaming Systems," ACM Multimedia, November 2011.
Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{chen11:cloudgaming,
AUTHOR = {Kuan-Ta Chen and Yu-Chun Chang and Po-Han Tseng and Chun-Ying Huang and Chin-Laung Lei},
TITLE = {Measuring The Latency of Cloud Gaming Systems},
BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2011 (short paper)},
MONTH = {Nov},
YEAR = {2011}
}