Improving response time interval in networked event-based mulsemedia systems

Abstract

Human perception is inherently multisensory involving sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Mulsemedia systems include the combination of traditional media (text, image, video, and audio) with non-traditional ones that stimulate other senses beyond sight and hearing. Whilst work has been done on some user-centred aspects that the distribution of mulsemedia data raises, such as synchronisation, and jitter, this paper tackles complementary issues that temporality constraints pose on the distribution of mulsemedia effects. It aims at improving response time interval in networked event-based mulsemedia systems based upon prior findings in this context. Thus, we reshaped the communication strategy of an open distributed mulsemedia platform called PlaySEM to work more efficiently with other event-based applications, such as games, VR/AR software, and interactive applications, wishing to stimulate other senses to increase the immersion of users. Moreover, we added lightweight communication protocols in its interface to analyse whether they reduce network overhead. To carry out the experiment, we developed mock applications for different protocols to simulate an interactive application working with the PlaySEM, measuring the delay between them. The results showed that by pre-processing sensory effects metadata before real-time communication, and selecting the appropriate protocol, response time interval in networked event-based mulsemedia systems can decrease remarkably.