Design and evaluation of a multi-user virtual audio chat

As advanced Internet services, networked virtual reality applications impose certain Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, due to rich multimedia content and perceived “real-time” interactivity. Two different representations of QoS are needed at the user/application level and at the communication level, which our approach attempts to relate using as a reference an interconnection model for networked virtual reality applications. We present the design and development of a multi-user virtual audio chat application and a performance evaluation based on QoS requirements. Objective and subjective methods for determining QoS have been addressed, and our results analysed for the purpose of possible QoS improvements.