Providing A Low Latency User Experience In A High Latency Application

Brook Conner
Sony Corporation of America
550 Madison Avenue, 5th floor
New York, New York, 10028
brook_conner@sonyusa.com

Loring Holden
Brown University site of the
NSF Science and Technology Center for
Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization
Providence, RI 02912
lsh@cs.brown.edu

Abstract:

Through the use of particular visual effects, we provide a low latency user experience, even when extremely large latencies occur in an application. We demonstrate these effects in a wide-area distributed virtual reality application. These effects include the use of motion blur, transparency, and defocusing. While the effects incur a performance penalty, the penalty is predictable, unlike the lag induced by network delays. Thus, we provide immediate feedback to each participant, even when the network prevents information more useful than the fact that delays are occurring. When updates are finally received, we use the same effects to provide coherent updates to the user's information, without the jarring discontinuities that otherwise would confuse a participant's understanding of the environment.

To appear in Proceedings of 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics

Postscript version, gzipped

• CR Categories and Subject Descriptors:
• Additional Keywords:
• Introduction
• Prior Work
  • Addressing Latency at a System Level
  • Visual Effects to Increase Comprehension of Complex Scenes
• Visual Effects to Reduce the Perception of Latency
  • Some of the User Actions Affected by Latency
  • Transparency, Motion Blur, and Defocusing
  • Applying Visual Effects with a Consistent Visual Language
• Implementation Notes
• Future Work
• Acknowledgements
• References
• About this document ...