Assessing the Impact of Network Quality-of-Service on Metaverse Virtual Reality User Experience

Metaverse virtual reality (VR) applications enable users to socialise, work, entertain, and study online with immersive experiences beyond the classic PC-based interactions. While the 360-degree immersion enables users to be fully engaged in a virtual scenario, suboptimal Quality-of-Experience (QoE) like poorly displayed 3D graphics, disruptive loading time, or motion lagging caused by degraded network Quality-of-Service (QoS) can be perceived by users much worse (such as dizziness) than a monitor visualisation. This paper empirically measures user QoE of metaverse VR caused by network QoS. Specifically, by focusing on both public social hubs and private user-created events in three popular metaverse VR applications (Rec Room, VRChat and MultiverseVR), we first identify three metrics, including environment freeze level, peripheral content loading time, and control response time, that describe metaverse user experience. By tuning three network QoS parameters (bandwidth, latency, and packet loss), we benchmark each QoE metric’s level from excellent to unplayable. Key insights are revealed, such as freeze of metaverse virtual environment is resilient to latency but sensitive to packet loss, and private user-created events demand better network conditions than public social hubs, providing a reference for ISPs to optimise their network QoS for superlative metaverse user experience.