Enabling and Understanding Interactive Social VR360 Video Viewing

This paper reports on the research being done towards enabling and understanding interactive social VR360 video viewing scenarios, by exclusively relying on web-based technologies, and using different types of consumption devices. After motivating the relevance of the research topic and associated impact, the paper elaborates on key requirements, features, and system components to effectively enable such scenarios, such as: adaptive and low-latency streaming, media synchronization, social presence, interaction channels, and assistive methods. For each of these features and components, different alternatives are assessed and proof of concept implementations are being provided. With an effective combination and integration of all these contributions, an end-to-end platform can be built and used as a research framework to explore the applicability and potential benefits of social VR360viewing in a variety of use cases, like education, culture or surveillance, by tailoring the technological components based on lessons learned from experimental studies. These use case studies can also provide relevant insights into activity patterns, behaviors, and preferences in Social Viewing scenarios.