"Cloud gaming is a new service based on cloud computation technology which allows games to be run on a server and streamed as video to players on a thin client. Commercial cloud gaming systems, such as Onlive, Gaikai and StreamMyGame remain proprietary, limiting access for game developers and researchers. In order to address these shortcomings, we developed an open source Unity3d cloud-based game system called Uniquitous that gives the game developers and researchers control of system and content. Detailed experiments evaluate performance of three main parameters: game genre, game resolution and game image quality. The evaluation results are used in a data model that can predict in-game frame rates for systems that have not been tested. Validation experiments show the accuracy of our model and allow us to use the model to explore cloud-based games in a variety of system conditions."

Cloud gaming is an application deployment scenario which runs an interactive gaming application remotely in a cloud according to the commands received from a thin client and streams the scenes as a video sequence back to the client over the Internet, and it is of interest to both research community and industry. The academic community has developed some open-source cloud gaming systems such as GamingAnywhere for research study, while some industrial pioneers such as Onlive and Gaikai have succeeded in gaining a large user base in the cloud gaming market. Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) virtualization plays an important role in such an environment as it is a critical component that allows virtual machines to run 3D applications with performance guarantees. Currently, GPU pass-through and GPU sharing are the two main techniques of GPU virtualization. The former enables a single virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly and exclusively, while the latter makes a physical GPU shareable by multiple virtual machines. VMware Inc., one of the most popular virtualization solution vendors, has provided concrete implementations of GPU pass-through and GPU sharing. In particular, it provides a GPU pass-through solution called Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA) and a GPU-sharing solution called Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA). Moreover, VMware Inc. recently claimed it realized another GPU sharing solution called vGPU. Nevertheless, the feasibility and performance of these solutions in cloud gaming has not been studied yet. In this work, an experimental study is conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of GPU pass-through and GPU sharing solutions offered by VMware in cloud gaming scenarios. The primary results confirm that vDGA and vGPU techniques can fit the demands of cloud gaming. In particular, these two solutions achieved good performance in the tested graphics card benchmarks, and gained acceptable image quality and response delay for the tested games.

In the recent years, the mobile gaming has been tremendously increased because of its enormous entertainment features. Mobile cloud gaming is a promising technology that overcomes the implicit restrictions such as computational capacity and limited battery life. GamingAnywhere is an open source cloud gaming system which is used in this thesis to measure the Quality of service of mobile cloud gaming. The aim of the thesis is to measure the QoS used in GamingAnywhere for mobile cloud gaming. Games are streamed from the server to the mobile client. In our study, QoS is measured using Differentiated Service (DiffServ) architecture for the traffic shaping. The research method is carried out using an experimental testbed. Dummynet is used for traffic shaping. Performance is measured in terms of bitrate, packet loss, jitter, and frame rate. Different resolutions of the game are considered in our empirical research and our results show that the framerate and bitrate have increased with the impact of network delay. / <p>Ganesh Grandhi: +46767671612</p>

In the recent years, cloud services are dominating the internet world. Streaming video content is drastically increased. This trend created a way for the cloud gaming industry. Gaming Anywhere is one such an open source cloud gaming system designed specifically for gaming users to experience high-quality gaming while eliminating the burden of upgrading hardware or software whenever the gaming system becomes outdated. Gaming Anywhere client can stream the desired game from a remote server with high-quality resolution and fps. Gaming Anywhere launches almost all type of games as per the request of the client. In this paper, the performance of a Gaming Anywhere server is evaluated in a virtual windows environment. Performance is categorically divided into two types. One is server metrics and the other is power consumption. Server metrics deals with CPU utilization, GPU utilization and multi-player capability. Power consumption deals with the CPU power usage of a virtual machine. The main aim of this paper is to conduct measurement studies on Gaming Anywhere server in two virtual implementation kits, VMware and VirtualBox, using monitoring tools. The analysis of the outcome is evaluated against the Gaming Anywhere physical server.

Background. The rendering of games takes a lot of processing power and requires expensivehardware to be able to perform this task in a real-time with an acceptableframe-rate. Games often also require an anti-cheat system that require extrapower to be able to always verify that the game has not been modified. With the help ofgame streaming these disadvantages could be removed from the clients. Objectives. The objective of this thesis is to create a game streaming server and client tosee if a game streaming server could scale with the amount of coresit has access to. Methods. The research question will be answered using the implementation methodology, and an experiment will be conducted using that implementation. Two programs are implemented, the server program and the client program.The servers implement the management of clients, the game logic, the rendering and the compression. Each client can only be connected to one server and the server and its clients live inside of a game instance. Everyone that is connected to one server play on the same instance.The implementation is implemented in the D programming language, and it uses the ZLib and the SDL2 libraries as the building blocks.With all of these connected an experiment is designed where as many clients as possible connect to the server. With this data a plot is create in the result section. Results. The output data shows that the implementation scale and a formula was made-up to match the scalability. The formula is <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?f(x)%20=%208%20+%205x%20-%200.11x%5E2" />. Conclusions. The experiment was successful and showed that the game server successfully scaledbased on the number of cores that where allocated. It does not scale as good as expected,but it is still an success. The test results are limited as it was only tested on one setup. More research is needed to test it on more hardware and to be able find more optimized implementations.

Spelbranschen är idag en av de största inom underhållning och utvecklas ständigt medhjälp av digitalisering. Inom både film- och musikbranschen har streaming blivitvedertaget och nu har det även börjat komma till spelvärlden i form av cloud gaming.På bara några år har de fyra cloud gaming-tjänsterna Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia GeForceNow, Playstation Now och Google Stadia lanserats. Under denna tid har även GoogleStadia hunnit lägga ner sin tjänst på grund av brist på konsumenter. Detta innebär att detär ytterst relevant att försöka skapa en förståelse för vad som krävs av cloud gaming föratt få användarna att överge det traditionella spelandet. Vi vill då undersöka huranvändarupplevelsen inom cloud gaming påverkar konsumenterna. För att göra dettahar vi i denna studie valt att fokusera på Xbox Game Pass. I denna uppsats har vi använt oss av en enkät, ett test samt en kompletterande intervjuför att komma fram till vårt resultat. Enkäten handlade om frekvens för spelande bådetraditionellt och via cloud gaming, vilka plattformar de använt eller känner till, samtfördelar och nackdelar med cloud gaming, för att få en översikt om vad åsikterna ärkring ämnet. Vi bad åtta deltagare spela fyra olika spel med hjälp av cloudgaming-tjänsten Xbox Game Pass under en satt tidsram, dessa deltagare intervjuade visedan efteråt för att ta del av deras upplevelse med cloud gaming. Vi fick 47 svar på vår enkät, där svaren visade att största problemen med cloud gaminghandlade om uppkoppling eller prestanda, men att det var lättillgängligt och att det varen fördel att inte behöva installera spel samt använda skivor. Det visade sig även attmajoriteten av respondenter antingen aldrig spelat via cloud gaming eller har enbarttestat någon gång. Intervjuerna hade varierande resultat, där kopplingen mellan nätverkoch dålig användarupplevelse inte var självklar, men att detta kan bero påförväntningarna på cloud gaming, eftersom flera respondenter från våra intervjuersupplevelser påverkades av deras förväntningar på cloud gaming.Vårt resultat tyder då på att konsumenterna inte är redo att överge det traditionellaspelandet, med tanke på hur instabilt och oklart cloud gaming är just nu.Användarupplevelsen för cloud gaming är ett hav av problem med immersionsbrytning,nätverksproblem, opålitlig stabilitet och höga förväntningar. Detta innebär attkonsumenter möjligtvis undviker cloud gaming eftersom de förväntar sig en negativanvändarupplevelse, vilket i sin tur tyder på ett negativt rykte. / The gaming industry is one of the largest in entertainment today and is constantlyevolving with the help of digitalization. In both the film and music industry, streaminghas become extremely popular and now the gaming world is following in their footstepsin the form of cloud gaming. In just a few years, the four cloud gaming services XboxGame Pass, Nvidia GeForce Now, Playstation Now and Google Stadia have beenlaunched. During this time, Google Stadia has also shut down its service due to a lack ofconsumers. This means that it is extremely relevant to try to create an understanding ofwhat is required of cloud gaming to get users to abandon traditional gaming. We want toinvestigate how the user experience in cloud gaming affects consumers. To do this, wehave in this study chosen to focus on Xbox Game Pass. In this paper, we have used a questionnaire, a test and a complementary interview toarrive at our results. The questionnaire dealt with the frequency of gaming bothtraditionally and via cloud gaming, which platforms they have used or know about, andthe advantages and disadvantages of cloud gaming, in order to get an overview of theopinions on the subject. We asked eight participants to play four different games usingthe Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming service during a set time frame, and we interviewedthese participants afterwards to learn about their experience with cloud gaming. As we can see from the results, we received 47 responses to our questionnaire, wherethe answers showed that the biggest problems with cloud gaming were about connectionor performance, but that it was easily accessible and that it was an advantage not to haveto install games and use disks. It also turned out that the majority of respondents haveeither never played via cloud gaming or have only tried it once. The interviews hadvarying results, where the link between networks and poor user experience was notobvious. However, this can depend on the expectations of cloud gaming since multipleof our respondents had their gaming experiences affected by their expectations. Ourfindings suggest that consumers are not ready to abandon traditional gaming, given thecurrent instability and uncertainty of cloud gaming. The cloud gaming user experienceis a sea of problems with immersion breaks, network issues, unreliable stability, andhigh expectations. This suggests that consumers may be avoiding cloud gaming becausethey are expecting a negative user experience, which implies a negative reputation.

Le Cloud computing émerge comme le nouveau paradigme informatique dans lequel la virtualisation des ressources fournit des services fiables correspondant aux demandes des utilisateurs. De nos jours, la plupart des applications interactives et utilisant beaucoup de données sont développées sur le cloud: Le jeu vidéo en est un exemple. Avec l'arrivée du cloud computing, l'accessibilité et l'ubiquité du jeu ont un brillant avenir; Les jeux peuvent être hébergés dans un serveur centralisé et accessibles via l'Internet par un client léger sur une grande variété de dispositifs avec des capacités modestes : c'est le cloud gaming. Le Cloud computing, dans le contexte de jeu vidéo a beaucoup attiré l'attention en raison de ses facilités d'évolution, de disponibilité et capacité de calcul. Cependant, les systèmes de cloud gaming actuels ont des exigences très fortes en termes de ressources réseau, réduisant ainsi l'accessibilité et l'ubiquité des jeux dans le cloud, car les dispositifs clients avec peu de bande passante et les personnes situées dans la zone avec des conditions de réseau limitées et/ou instables, ne peuvent pas bénéficier de ces services de cloud computing. Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une technique d'adaptation inspirée par l'approche du niveau de détail (Level of detail) dans les graphiques 3D. Elle est basée sur un paradigme du cloud gaming dans l'objectif de fournir une accessibilité multi-plateforme, tout en améliorant la qualité d'expérience (QoE) du joueur en réduisant l'impact des mauvaises conditions réseau (delai, perte, gigue) sur l'interactivité et réactivité du jeu. Notre première contribution se compose de modèles de jeu reliant les objets du jeu à leurs besoins en termes de communication représentés par leurs importances dans le jeu. Nous avons ensuite fourni une approche de niveau de détail pour gérer la distribution des ressources réseau basée sur l'importance des objets dans la scène et les conditions réseau. Nous validons notre approche en utilisant des jeu prototypes et evaluons la QoE du joueur, par des expériences pilotes. Les résultats montrent que le framework proposé fournit une importante amélioration de la QoE. / With the arrival of cloud computing technology, game accessibility and ubiquity havea bright future. Games can be hosted in a centralize server and accessed through theInternet by a thin client on a wide variety of devices with modest capabilities: cloudgaming. Some of the advantages of using cloud computing in game context includes:device ubiquity, computing exibility, affordable cost and lowered set up overheads andcompatibility issues. However, current cloud gaming systems have very strong requirementsin terms of network resources, thus reducing their widespread adoption. In factdevices with little bandwidth and people located in area with limited network capacity,cannot take advantage of these cloud services. In this thesis we present an adaptationtechnique inspired by the level of detail (LoD) approach in 3D graphics. It is based ona cloud gaming paradigm in other to maintain user's quality of experience (QoE) byreducing the impact of poor network parameters (delay, loss, bandwidth) on game interactivity.Our first contribution consist of game models expressing game objects and theircommunications needs represented by their importance in the game. We provided twodifferent ways to manage objects' importance using agents organizations and gameplaycomponents. We then provided a level of detail approach for managing network resourcedistribution based on objects importance in the game scene and network conditions. Weexploited the dynamic objects importance adjustment models presented above to proposeLoD systems adapting to changes during game sessions. The experimental validation ofboth adaptation models showed that the suggested adaptation minimizes the effects oflow and/or unstable network conditions in maintaining game responsiveness and player'sQoE.

Molnbaserat spelande är spelande som sker över nätverket. Spelet streamas från servrar till användarens enhet. Detta ger möjligheten att spela på enheter som inte skulle vara tillräckligt kraftfulla för att spela vissa spel på annat sätt. Mobiltelefonen är den nuvarande primära enheten för spel och fortsätter att öka i popularitet. I tidigare forskningsstudier och litteratur finns det ett uttalat behov för mätning av upplevelsekvalitet, även känt som Quality of Experience (QoE) för nylanserade molntjänster. QoE är ett sätt att undersöka användarnöjdhet och nöje för en specifik applikation eller tjänst. Denna studie redogör upplevd QoE för den molnbaserade speltjänsten Google Stadia på mobila enheter. Studien använder en kvalitativ forskningsansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer som metod för datainsamling. Resultatet analyseras med hjälp av ramverket CCA och kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet visar att upplevd QoE är bra överlag men att det finns förbättringsområden för spelupplevelsen. Denna studie utvecklar kunskapen om hur väl molnbaserade speltjänster fungerar på en mobiltelefon i dagsläget och resultatet visar behovet att liknande forskningsstudier utförs för att fördjupa denna kunskap. / Cloud gaming provides a way to play games over the network. This presents the possibility to play on devices that would not be powerful enough to play certain games otherwise. The mobile phone is the current primary device for gaming and continues to rise in popularity. In previous research studies and literature, there is an expressed necessity for measuring the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the cloud gaming services. QoE is a way to examine user satisfaction and entertainment for a specific application or service. This paper presents a study of perceived QoE for the cloud-based gaming service Google Stadia on mobile devices. The study is using a qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews as a data collection method. The result is analyzed using the framework CCA and qualitative content analysis. The result shows that the perceived QoE is good overall but that the gaming experience has some minor inconveniences. This study expands the knowledge of how well cloud gaming services work on a mobile phone at this time and the result shows the need for similar research studies to deepen this knowledge.

The modern world has opened the gates to a lot of advancements in cloud computing, particularly in the field of Cloud Gaming. The most recent development made in this area is the open-source cloud gaming system called GamingAnywhere. The relationship between the CPU and GPU is what is the main object of our concentration in this thesis paper. The Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) performance plays a vital role in analyzing the playing experience and enhancement of GamingAnywhere. In this paper, the virtualization of the GPU has been concentrated on and is suggested that the acceleration of this unit using NVIDIA CUDA, is the key for better performance while using GamingAnywhere. After vast research, the technique employed for NVIDIA CUDA has been chosen as gVirtuS. There is an experimental study conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of GPU solutions by VMware in cloud gaming scenarios given by GamingAnywhere. Performance is measured in terms of bitrate, packet loss, jitter and frame rate. Different resolutions of the game are considered in our empirical research and our results show that the frame rate and bitrate have increased with different resolutions, and the usage of NVIDIA CUDA enhanced GPU.

The modern world has opened the gates to a lot of advancements in cloud computing, particularly in the field of Cloud Gaming. The most recent development made in this area is the open-source cloud gaming system called GamingAnywhere. The relationship between the CPU and GPU is what is the main object of our concentration in this thesis paper. The Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) performance plays a vital role in analyzing the playing experience and enhancement of GamingAnywhere. In this paper, the virtualization of the GPU has been concentrated on and is suggested that the acceleration of this unit using NVIDIA CUDA, is the key for better performance while using GamingAnywhere. After vast research, the technique employed for NVIDIA CUDA has been chosen as gVirtuS. There is an experimental study conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of GPU solutions by VMware in cloud gaming scenarios given by GamingAnywhere. Performance is measured in terms of bitrate, packet loss, jitter and frame rate. Different resolutions of the game are considered in our empirical research and our results show that the frame rate and bitrate have increased with different resolutions, and the usage of NVIDIA CUDA enhanced GPU.