i2CAT participates in the second edition of Video Art Game

The second edition of the Video Art Game (VAG) experience was celebrated last 1st and 2nd of October in Amposta (Tarragona). HoloMIT was presented as a live demo in this world-class event celebrating gamification and digital entertainment. This disruptive holoportation technology is developed by i2CAT and aims at bringing a real feeling of presence in remote immersive experiences, such as videoconferencing (which will soon become holo conferencing), immersive training, e-learning and multiplayer gaming for VR, AR or more in general XR applications. Attendees had the chance to witness, in first person, the demonstration of a fully immersive holoportation experience within a virtual scenario. Users were into virtual, augmented or extended realities (VR/AR/XR) and had their video captured by a volumetric capturing system that projected this in real-time directly into the scenario.

Within Open-VERSO, the holoportation technology represents the basis of the “Social VR” technological vertical enabler. Both the i2CAT and Vicomtech foundations participate in this Proof of Concept (PoC).

To that end, a crucial component of the HoloMIT service is considered: the Point Cloud Multipoint Control Unit (PC-MCU). The PC-MCU is a virtualised service capable of optimising, automatically in the cloud, the volumetric video streams based on positions, relative distances and viewpoints of the participants.

The PC-MCU, being a perfect fit for a 5G-based network, will be adapted to the characteristics of environments similar to the one provided by Open-VERSO:

(i) architecture with support for Network Function Virtualisation (NFV),

(ii) continued monitoring of the deployment parameters and feedback and operations in the network (e.g., to reconfigure or scale services), and

(iii) the availability of 5G and B5G networks, as the technological stratum.

Specifically, the PC-MCU is to be adapted to a network service operating in the NFV environment, which can be deployed on demand; thus adjusting its computational and network load according to the user’s needs. Similarly, the session orchestrator (managing the session used by the PC-MCUs) is virtualised as well and optimises the communication between PC-MCUs according to data received from the environment.

The deployment of this PoC seeks to evaluate the benefits of using the virtualised Social VR service in this kind of platforms and networks, since the technical improvements provided by 5G guarantee improved bandwidth (eMBB), about 10x faster, as well as ultra-low latency (ULLC), in the order of milliseconds. These improvements may significantly help to meet the requirements of the holoportation systems managing volumetric video, such as the compression and transmission of volumetric video represented as point clouds and 3D meshes.