Optimization of Networked Virtual Environments
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 January 2022) | Viewed by 7455
Special Issue Editor
Interests: communications technology; quality of experience; multimedia communications; networked virtual environments; networked games; computational and artificial intelligence; computers and information processing
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Networked virtual environments (NVE) enable physically distanced users to participate in the shared virtual environment. NVEs have, in the last few decades, become one of the prime mediums for the entertainment industry through multiplayer games. Although social NVEs like Second Life have suffered a steep decline in popularity, the development of virtual reality (VR) headsets and new NVE services based on VR, such as Facebook Horizons, bring new life into this area of NVE application. NVEs are still troubled with multiple issues that degrade its capabilities and perceived quality of experience for its users such as scalability issues, network degradation, adaptability to user-generated content, and so on. Even the most popular NVEs such as today’s biggest subscription-based Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft occasionally suffers from scalability issues due to player load, and still implements significant limitations to gatherings of large numbers of player. Implementation and optimization of player-generated and destroyed content is still a troubling issue for many MMORPGs, although many games have tackled this issue. Novel NVE platforms using virtual reality, augmented reality and remote reality face novel challenges such as positioning and orientation of participants in real time, conveying facial expressions and gesticulation, transporting large amounts of data over the network, and so on. Different approaches for economy systems in NVEs, lately focusing on free-to-play concepts and purchase of virtual goods need to be carefully planned and intervened with the game design. Constant adaptation and optimization based on user behavior testing is a must for the companies in this field today.
Therefore, optimizations of different aspects of virtual environments are an important topic for both academia and industry. Hence, in addition to NVE researchers, game developers and designers, network engineers, as well as economy experts, are asked to contribute with submissions to this Special Issue.
Dr. Mirko Sužnjević
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- scalability mechanisms for NVEs
- quality of Experience for NVEs
- novel NVE applications and platforms
- networked virtual reality, augmented reality and remote reality applications
- economy systems in NVEs
- networked games
- user behavior in NVEs
- desing, implementation and evaluation of NVEs
- HCI for NVEs
- cloud gaming for multiplayer games
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