Providing a low latency user experience in a high latency application

Abstract

Through the use of particular visual effects, we provide a low latency user experience, even when extremely large latencies occur in an application. We demonstrate these effects in a wide-area distributed virtual reality application. These effects include the use of motion blur, transparency, and defocusing. While the effects incur a performance penalty, the penalty is predictable, unlike the lag induced by network delays. Thus, we provide immediate feedback to each participant, even when the network prevents information more useful than the fact that delays are occurring. When updates are finally received, we use the same effects to provide coherent updates to the user's information, without the jarring discontinuities that otherwise would confuse a participant's understanding of the environment.