Cybersickness-aware Tile-based Adaptive 360° Video Streaming

Abstract: In contrast to traditional videos, the imaging in virtual reality (VR) is 360{\deg}, and it consumes larger bandwidth to transmit video contents. To reduce bandwidth consumption, tile-based streaming has been proposed to deliver the focused part of the video, instead of the whole one. On the other hand, the techniques to alleviate cybersickness, which is akin to motion sickness and happens when using digital displays, have not been jointly explored with the tile selection in VR. In this paper, we investigate Tile Selection with Cybersickness Control (TSCC) in an adaptive 360{\deg} video streaming system with cybersickness alleviation. We propose an m-competitive online algorithm with Cybersickness Indicator (CI) and Video Loss Indicator (VLI) to evaluate instant cybersickness and the total loss of video quality. Moreover, the algorithm exploits Sickness Migration Indicator (SMI) to evaluate the cybersickness accumulated over time and the increase of optical flow to improve the tile quality assignment. Simulations with a real network dataset show that our algorithm outperforms the baselines regarding video quality and cybersickness accumulation.