Bhandari 1

Karan Bhandari

Dr. Tracy Bradley Maples

CECS 572. Advanced Computer Networking

24 February 2011

Challenges plaguing Virtual Reality

We are fooled to believe that we laugh, play and merry make but in reality we spend our lives
“confined to a container that collects and distribute our biomedical energy to computerized
slave-masters” (Irwin). Virtual reality is the obscure buzzword that has caught the attention of
businesses, academic institutions and youngsters in general. Virtual realistic environments like
Second Life, Croquet and Wonderland are synonymous with virtual reality, cyberspace, virtual
world, virtual environment and artificial reality. Virtual reality has enamored us with its
fascinating enigma, in this paper we delve into the challenges that it poses.

Performance of Virtual Reality is a significant issue in a multi-user distributed client-server

environment. It would be extremely frustrating if the network latencies and mindboggling
overheads got into the way of our unfathomable virtual reality experience. Pulo and Houle
convey that we have three kinds of virtual world systems – Single server, Multi server and
distributed server (Pulo and Houle). Apart from real time interactions between client and server
we also have inter-server transactions. The framework they have advocated have Entities,
Events, Logfiles, Costs, Communication Strategies and Allocation Strategies working in tandem
using object oriented techniques does tend to minimize latency and bandwidth usage by
downsampling Log Files .It can potentially introduce other problem like overfull servers and
event queues.

Apart from performance limited resources can cripple our photorealistic virtual world view
(Tanikawa, Endo and Hirose). Real pictures captured from all kinds of image capturing system
along with global position and orientation can hog our resources. Tanikawa, Endo and Hirose
have touched upon the issue “generating novel images from finite-image data sets”. If users need
to get ourselves involved with virtual world, they need to experience high degree of “reality”.
Conventional Computer Graphics method requires us to have a lot of number crunching
calculations, and then rendering photorealistic images will not happen in real-time mode. I
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remember when I was making a 5 minute animation in 3D studio max™ - it took my dual core
computer the entire night to convert from “.max” to “.avi” format. Imagine if you want this
operation to be carried out in some networked distributed environment, God help you. That 5min
realistic animation clip took up 5 gigabytes! Principle of “rote memorization” is generally used
for images to make up our 3D world. Tanikawa, Endo and Hirose have used a novel technique to
generate infinite images out of finite image by using morphing and image deformation
techniques. But there is one tradeoff; the images become distorted in the race for network and
memory optimization. They advocate a “view-dependent ‘subjective’ virtual world using view-
dependent images and models”. However you can append 3D information to real images
(Debevec, Taylor and Malik) by using image-based modeling, recovery of a basic geometric
model from the photographed scene, and view-dependent texture mapping. But this involves
cost, time and labor to construct larger 3D scenes. With Tanikawa’s techniques- occlusion
(deficiency of ray information) to user viewpoint can occur. Then presumption of 3D
information can be made by division into sub-images for wider viewport. But they are associated
with missing 3D layer information and blurring.

The paragraphs above were emphasizing on issues pertaining to improving and optimizing ones’
virtual reality experience. But what happens if the environment is multi-threaded, for example if
a virtual class of thirty students with one instructor, state of all clients and entities must be
updated. And each client/ entity must undergo concurrent state changes like rendering, sound and
geo positioning. The virtual terminal of all clients must be updated with expression change,
locomotion, voice, dynamics, lighting, texturing and imagine if the virtual classroom has virtual
terminals in front of the student avatars, complexity of the situation can be compounded.
“Update packets” and “Assign Packets” (Pulo and Houle) must be shuttled to and fro among a
plethora of network boundaries.

The situation above occurs when we access virtual reality applications like Second Life on a 2D
terminal with a 3D experience. But we are evolving towards 3D, then “real 3D” which require us
to wear glasses, beyond that we moving towards holographic visualizations and motion
awareness. Holography involves capturing ray information. Even vibrations from the vicious
attack by monsters in our game are transmitted to us. Apart from output, even our input
interfaces have drastically altered. Many virtual worlds do not provision for newer input devices
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like WiiMote or infrared sensor array (Jeon, Kwon and Park). The infrared sensor array requires
20 sensors to capture real time input like hand gestures, distances or movement. They require
three levels of processing. WiiMote and touch based input require additional calibration.
Biofeedback (Díaz, Hernández and Escalona) enhances users’ experience. Keyboard, mouse and
joystick have been standardized but other devices are not in the mainstream. Virtual World and
Real World Interface (VRI) (Syamsuddin, Lee and Kwon) talk about an adaptor that can be
interfaced to the real world. Apart from the game consoles the web based virtual world do not
have support for it. But the virtual worlds themselves are interoperable to execute across the web
with the aid of RESTful web services (Fang, Cai and Coll). Massive Multi Player online (MMO)
games are possible as a consequence of web services. This has also spurred e-learning, e-
commerce, service rendering and other enterprise level activities.

Now we shall make a transition to the impact that Virtual worlds have had on us. We are drifting
away from reality and spending more time in the virtual world. This reduces consumption of real
objects in the real world. There are 0.253 billion cybercitizens in China (Peng, Zhang and Wu)
alone, each of whom spends 19hours/week in front of the console. This accounts for 88.61
billion hours per year; this seriously impacts the real economy and GDP- Gross Domestic
Product. “The rapid growth of online game players makes the virtual goods trade and production
more prevalent in the online environment.” (Peng, Zhang and Wu). Cybercitizens have spent so
much time online that their real jobs and source of income have been impacted. Despite
“Replacement Effect of virtual activity on Real GDP” (Peng, Zhang and Wu); they have started
making money online, yes you are right – virtual money made with the aid of virtual activities.
Cybercitizens have started producing virtual goods, delivering virtual services and people have
started consuming, procuring and utilizing it. We better start reflecting virtual economy impact
on the consolidated GDP. We must have the consolidated GDP - combination of real GDP and
virtual GDP. There is no way to map labor hours or man hours to reflect in the real world.
Realization of virtual wealth can be brought about by the Utility theory (Guo, Chow and Gong).
They have defined what an utilizable service/ product is in a virtual world.

Money, along with wealth and prosperity also draws the attention of criminals and many horrors
associated with it. The territories of countries lie within the servers (Kono), which are exposed to
a multitude of risks. So many virtual frauds have been detected. Economies have been digitized;
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it is possible to bankrupt a country in a single second with the click of a button. Second life uses
virtual currency called Linden dollar (LD). 270 LD makes $1. GIP Service Inc., a Tokyo-based
Internet venture firm has purchased 1.6 million square meters of virtual land.

Sure virtual world has salvaged us in many ways, distance online education is possible, and
companies need not squander money for meetings. But not all is rosy in the virtual land. Apart
from money fraud: cyber bulling has wrecked havoc. Virtual gambling, illegal virtual money and
other frauds have made many avatars, a victim. Young children feel demoralized after they have
been cyber-bullied. Then the sex, lies and internet behind closed curtains have a debilitating
effect on the young minds. There is a policy gap that exists between real and artificial world.
Constitutions, books of law and other ancient scripts and beliefs must be rewritten, we need to
unlearn and relearn. “Policies lose their effect the moment they enter the virtual world, mainly
because of their vulnerability to abuse and misuse in a world where much of what is happening is
not visible. Further, the anonymity presents an attractive situation for fraud, clandestine and
illegal trade.” (Annamalai, Ehsan and Awang). And regulation is so difficult, people would like
their identity to be concealed and like to remain anonymous (Shang, Chen and Huang). Policy
making for the unregulated virtual world is difficult when we have the power to teleport to
different places with the aid of our imagination. We don’t even know how to award educational
degrees, when people can easily purchase essays, projects and academic reports.

This paper brings to light the issues and challenges that have plagued virtual reality.
Implementing a realistic virtual world experience demands us to augment the networking
infrastructure for a realistic performance and experience. With a plethora of input and output
devices and a contrasting desire to achieve mobility, a solid interoperating environment creation
will take time, manpower and cost. Online virtual reality portals like Second Life encourage
academic, sportive and enterprise level activities but are vulnerable in many ways. In order to
reflect online effort existing economic principles ought to be changed and stringent regulation
standards must be enforced for us to have a pleasurable virtual reality experience.
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Works Cited
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Debevec, Paul E, Camillo J Taylor and Jitendra Malik. "Modeling and Rendering Architecture
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Díaz, Marissa, et al. "Capturing Water and Sound Waves to Interact with Virtual Nature." IEEE
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Fang, Zhi-Cong, Hong Cai and XiChang Coll. "Building Interoperable 3D Virtual World
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