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Multiplayer eXtended Reality: Use-cases, Applications and Networking

Multiplayer eXtended Reality: Use-cases, Applications and Networking
To extend our current work on ‘single-player’ XR to the multiplayer case, by developing a new set of tools and applications and designing new communication network protocols and mechanisms to support their requirements, with particular focus on...

Teleporting multiple users to the same ‘Metaverse’ instance allows them to interact, perform joint activities such as playing music, painting and sculpting together, discover new virtual places, work, or simply have a conversation. Examples include attending live spectacles and cultural events , games , holographic teleconferencing , collaborative art and music creation, and many more. More important, virtual spaces will enable new ways to communicate and interact that may go beyond those from the real world, thus opening the door to create completely new experiences.

However, we are still far from seamlessly supporting such a multiplayer interaction in virtual spaces. Many technical advances are still required: On the one hand, new tools and applications able to support such a multiplayer collaborative interaction and communication in the metaverse need to be engineered. On the other hand, a high performance, ultra reliable and low latency communication network —with special attention to the wireless access— is required to physically interconnect them. Moreover, atop the technology layer, radically new use-cases still need to be envisioned, requiring a complete interdisciplinary approach.

In this project, we aim to extend our current work on ‘single-player’ XR —where a single player interacts with the virtual environment— to the multiplayer case, by:

a. Developing / Extending a new set of tools and applications able to support both collaborative creation and experience playing in the XR environments.

b. Designing new communication network protocols and mechanisms to support the requirements of these tools and applications, with particular focus on wireless access.

The project will be supported by the PhD Fellowship program at the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at UPF. The results and parallel work in several ongoing EU projects (WI-XR, MAX-R, SignON, EMIL) as well as industrial one (Nokia Wi-Fi 8 collaboration).