Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) have led to growing demand by consumers to access their digital entertainment, which are increasingly cloud-based, whenever and wherever they are using networks of diverse characteristics. Devices used to access cloud services vary enormously in computational and communication capabilities. Given the above heterogeneous nature of networks and devices, our vision in this project is to develop a design methodology and enabling technologies to support ""play anywhere on any device, pause and resume on any device"" capabilities in next-generation cloud-based video games. More specifically, we intend to develop technologies that ease the development and online running of single and multiple-player video games so that they can be developed once and run on any device over any network. To address the technological challenges that need to be overcome to realize this vision, we shall provide new knowledge and integrated ICT solutions that address the following inter-related objectives: (1) Understanding the impacts of heterogeneous devices and networks on players' quality of experience; (2) Developing a cognitive architectural framework that enables dynamic utilization of resources in the cloud, access networks and user devices; (3) Developing cognitive capabilities and resource management algorithms that optimize resource utilization in the cloud, the access network, and user devices; (4) Developing prototype games for experimentation and demonstrations; (5) Explore future-generation immersive gaming environments. These ambitious objectives will be accomplished by a multidisciplinary team of researchers with complementary expertise in cloud networking, multimedia, stochastic control, computing device architecture, software systems, and cognitive science, working in close collaboration with key industry stakeholders in the multi-billion dollar Canadian online video game industry. This project will provide novel technologies to fuel the growth of this important Canadian economic sector, and provide more than 23 person-years of multi-disciplinary HQP training that will be greatly beneficial in satisfying the human resource needs of this sector.