Assessing the Impact of Network Quality-of-Service on Metaverse Virtual Reality User Experience

TL;DR

This study empirically evaluates how network Quality-of-Service parameters like bandwidth, latency, and packet loss affect user experience in metaverse VR applications, highlighting key factors influencing immersion and usability.

Contribution

It identifies specific network QoS metrics impacting VR user experience and benchmarks their effects across different metaverse platforms and scenarios.

Findings

Environment freeze is more affected by packet loss than latency.

Private events require better network conditions than public hubs.

Freeze level remains stable despite increased latency.

Abstract

Metaverse virtual reality (VR) applications enable users to socialise, work, entertain, and study online with immersive experiences beyond the classic PC-based interactions. While the 360-degree immersion enables users to be fully engaged in a virtual scenario, suboptimal Quality-of-Experience (QoE) like poorly displayed 3D graphics, disruptive loading time, or motion lagging caused by degraded network Quality-of-Service (QoS) can be perceived by users much worse (such as dizziness) than a monitor visualisation. This paper empirically measures user QoE of metaverse VR caused by network QoS. Specifically, by focusing on both public social hubs and private user-created events in three popular metaverse VR applications (Rec Room, VRChat and MultiverseVR), we first identify three metrics, including environment freeze level, peripheral content loading time, and control response time, that describe metaverse user experience. By tuning three network QoS parameters (bandwidth, latency, and packet loss), we benchmark each QoE metric's level from excellent to unplayable. Key insights are revealed, such as freeze of metaverse virtual environment is resilient to latency but sensitive to packet loss, and private user-created events demand better network conditions than public social hubs, providing a reference for ISPs to optimise their network QoS for superlative metaverse user experience.