capbtabboxtable[][]

On the impact of VR/AR applications on optical transport networks: First
experiments with Meta Quest 3 gaming and conferencing applications

C. de Quinto1, A. Navarro1, G. Otero1, N. Koneva1, J. A. Hernández1,

M. Quagliotti3 A. Sánchez-Macian1, F. Arpanaei1, P. Reviriego2, Ó. González de
Dios4, J. M. Rivas-Moscoso4, E. Riccardi3, D. Larrabeiti1,

1Univ. Carlos III de Madrid, Spain 2 Univ. Politecnica de Madrid, Spain 3 TIM,
Italy, 4 Telefonica I+D, Spain

###### Abstract

With the advent of next-generation AR/VR headsets, many of them with
affordable prices, telecom operators have forecasted an explosive growth of
traffic in their networks. Penetration of AR/VR services and applications is
estimated to grow exponentially in the next few years. This work attempts to
shed light on the bandwidth capacity requirements and latency of popular AR/VR
applications with four different real experimental settings on the Meta Quest
3 headsets, and their potential impact on the network.

Keywords: AR/VR; Metaverse; Traffic profiles; Meta Quest 3 .

##  1 Introduction

In its latest report [1], the IEEE Standards Association has uncovered four
key future-focused trends expected to shape the foundational technology
landscape for 2024 and beyond: Evolution of the Metaverse, Building Trust with
Data Governance, Child Safety Online, and Advances in Quantum Computing and
New Applications.

Indeed, the global AR/VR and VR headset market size reached US$ 16.6 Billion
in 2023 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
12.44% during the period 2024-2032. Concerning market share, the number of
AR/VR headsets is rapidly growing at an exponential pace with Meta Quest 3 and
Playstation VR Headset being the sales leaders. Recently Apple Vision Pro has
appeared in the market selling all their stock. Other brands like Pico and HTC
have a reasonable market share, while other consumer brands like Xiaomi and
Samsung have recently announced plans for dealing AR/VR products sometime in
2024. These devices have penetrated 1-2% of households in North America, the
EU, and China.

The Metaverse opens new possibilities with a wide range of applications and
use cases: (1) 360 gaming (either online or local), (2) entertainment
(concerts, sports events), (3) training and education, (4) remote healthcare,
(5) immersive tourism, etc. Some of these use cases and related network-based
experiments can be found in [2, 3]. At a high level, the metaverse can be
categorized into these three business sectors: Industrial, Enterprise, and
Consumer.

A good example of Industrial Metaverse, as noted in [4], can be Tactile
Internet for Remote Surgery: This use case delves into the challenges and
requirements for remote telesurgery, including ultra-low latency (below 1 ms),
high reliability (up to 99.9999999%) for UHD medical video over non-public
networks (NPNs) [5], and massive data rates (up to 1 Tbit/s) to support
applications like AR and Holographic Type Communication (HTC) [6]. Regarding
Enterprise Metaverse, Academic/Professional e-Learning explores the potential
of immersive technologies VR/AR in enhancing educational experiences, both in
academic and professional settings. It discusses the requirements for high-
quality video streaming (up to 2.35 Gbps for eXtended Reality XR), ultra-low
network latency (haptic response time to 5.5 ms), and scalability to support a
large number of students simultaneously [7]. Finally, as an example of use
cases with high development potential within the Consumer Metaverse, Virtual
Tourism in Smart City (Consumer Metaverse) focuses on the integration of
virtual and augmented reality experiences in the context of smart cities,
enabling immersive tourism experiences and metaverse-driven services for
citizens and visitors. These services require efficient mobility and security
solutions, with strict requirements for low latency (20 ms for Ultra-Reliable
Low Latency Communications (URLLC)), high data mobility (10 km/h for AR/VR,
0,5 km/h for Telepresence), data rate (from 40 to 600 Mbit/s) and reliability
(up to 99.9999%) to support these applications [8].

While new market opportunities appear with AR/VR products, integrating these
technologies necessitates significant network upgrades to handle the increased
bandwidth and latency demands they impose. AR/VR applications heavily rely on
streaming high-resolution visuals and spatial data, requiring significantly
more bandwidth than traditional voice or video calls. 5G networks with near-
Gbps speeds are crucial for seamless AR/VR experiences. Regarding latency,
high delay and delay variation (aka jitter) in data transmission can cause
nausea and disorientation in VR environments. Real-time interaction requires
ultra-low latency networks, pushing the boundaries of current
telecommunication infrastructure. Thus, the proliferation of AR/VR devices
will significantly increase overall network traffic, demanding higher capacity
to avoid congestion and maintain consistent performance.

Hence, telecom operators need to prepare for a possible exponential growth in
the traffic injected by these applications into their networks and the related
network requirements demanded by them. Among other aspects, telcos will be
required to update their infrastructure, investing heavily in fiber optic
rollouts, edge computing infrastructure, and 5G-A/6G deployments.

##  2 State of the Art

Recent studies have focused into various aspects of AR/VR applications,
highlighting critical factors such as network performance, privacy concerns,
interaction with sensor networks, security vulnerabilities, and cloud-
rendering architectures. In [9], the authors explore the relationship between
Wi-Fi performance and the quality of VR streaming experiences. The study
investigates the characteristics of VR traffic over Wi-Fi networks,
particularly focusing on sustained network performance and the impact of frame
rate on Wi-Fi efficiency. Notably, it identifies a segmentation mechanism in
WebRTC-based services that affects Wi-Fi airtime consumption.

The study carried out in [10] addresses privacy risks associated with VR
platforms, emphasizing the collection of sensitive data by VR sensors and the
potential for user identification. The study introduces BEHAVR, a framework
for analyzing sensor data across VR applications, demonstrating high accuracy
in user identification. This highlights the importance of considering privacy
implications in AR/VR research.

In [11], Makolkina et al. explore the interaction between augmented reality
and flying ubiquitous sensor networks (FUSN), emphasizing the need for new
traffic patterns to ensure the quality of experience. The study proposes a
novel traffic pattern capturing service space, environment, and user behavior
models, suggesting advancements in AR technologies.

The authors of [12] focus on security and privacy issues in mobile AR
applications, specifically regarding the inference of user location based on
network traffic patterns. The study demonstrates a side-channel attack against
a popular AR application, highlighting vulnerabilities in location-based AR
services and advocating for mitigation strategies.

In [13], the authors investigate cloud-rendering architectures for AR on
lightweight glasses, emphasizing the challenges of low latency and high data
rates in wireless networks. The study proposes a realistic traffic model based
on video data analysis, aiming to assess network performance in cloud-rendered
AR scenarios.

In contrast to the aforementioned studies, our paper provides a comprehensive
overview of traffic patterns observed in various AR/VR applications, including
onsite video gaming, external rendering video gaming, and virtual reality
video streaming. While [9] and [13] address network performance in VR
streaming and cloud-rendering architectures respectively, our study extends
this by examining traffic profiles across different AR/VR scenarios.
Furthermore, we complement [10] by focusing on traffic characteristics rather
than privacy concerns, thereby contributing to a holistic understanding of
AR/VR application dynamics. Moreover, while [11] explores new traffic patterns
for augmented reality, our study extends this by examining traffic profiles in
diverse AR/VR contexts.

In this document, we present multiple setups for studying the impact of
different AR/VR applications on the network. In particular, we have collected
packet traces in several application scenarios and measured latency and
bandwidth requirements as they traverse the access networks. We observe that
different applications and setups show various traffic profiles, in most cases
similar to high-resolution video-streaming (like 4K or 8K resolution video).

We believe that our research provides valuable insights into the traffic
patterns critical for ensuring the quality of AR/VR experiences, thereby
advancing the understanding of network requirements and performance
optimization in immersive applications. The remainder of this document is
organized as follows: Section 3 overviews the different measurement setups for
the experiments, whose results are explained in Section 4. Finally, Section 5
concludes this article with a summary of its main findings and conclusions.

##  3 AR/VR setups and experiments

#1 Gaming on the headset (Hyper Dash game): This scenario represents the use
case where a consumer plays a low-resolution game that runs directly on the
MetaQuest3 hardware. (See Fig. 1); the computational power required for
rendering this game is affordable and the headset itself can run the game
without external support. Captured traces reveal that Kbps traffic (about 50
packet/s with periodic spikes) goes from the headset to the Internet, mainly
the movements of the controllers and the keystrokes and commands (shoots,
position, etc), that is, important information for online gaming with other
players around the world. This behavior has been previously observed in
previous online gaming studies (without AR/VR headset), see [14].

Fig. 1: Overview of all deployed scenarios

#2 Gaming supported by external computer: Fig. 1 shows a second gaming
scenario where the game does not run on the headset but on a physically closed
desktop computer. Here, the game demands high computational power (GPUs for
graphics rendering), thus an external computer is needed to properly operate.
The traces reveal a continuous flow of around 157 Mb/s from the local PC
station towards the AR/VR headset, and again a few Kb/s towards the Internet.

#3 Streaming 360 videos (YoutubeVR): In this case, the user is watching a
360-video (Youtube VR application) streamed over the Internet. Fig. 1 details
the scenario and bitrate arrival from the streaming server (Youtube VR),
showing an average bitrate of 60 Mb/s downstream; this is approximately the
typical bitrate of 3x a classical 2K (i.e. 2048 × 1080) video stream.

#4 Collaborative business meeting (with Meta Workrooms) In the fourth
scenario, two users from different cities in Madrid region (Spain) are having
a teleconference using Meta Workrooms, an application for teleconference (see
Fig. 1). The two users see each other’s avatar and exchange some files while
talking and drawing diagrams with their fingers. In this case, the traffic
exchanged between them is approximately 15 Mb/s.

Fig. 2 shows the bitrate (in bits/s) observed in the four scenarios

Fig. 2: Screenshot, bitrate and latency measured in all scenarios

Table 1 presents a summary of the relevant bitrates, latency, and packet
characteristics observed in each scenario. In the ”gaming on headset”
scenario, games are processed directly on the headset’s hardware, resulting in
lower game resolution and visual quality. This setup transmits only keystrokes
and essential online gaming information to the Metro network. We noted that
the game performs smoothly when the Internet connection is facilitated through
a mobile phone (refer to the 4G row in the table), albeit with slightly higher
latency (19.6 ms compared to 12.1 ms) compared to when the headset connects
via WiFi to a home modem/router and then through FTTH (Fiber to the Home) to
the Internet. In the second scenario, the game’s processing is predominantly
handled by an external PC at the user’s home, with the bitrates and latency
figures reflecting the connection between the user and this external PC. The
Internet traffic in this scenario closely mirrors that of the ”gaming on
headset” scenario. Regarding the 360-video streaming scenario to YoutubeVR,
the bitrates vary based on the original video resolution and align with
typical video streaming values. Lastly, in the Meta Workrooms case, the
bitrate and latency metrics are in line with those expected for FullHD
resolution video streaming to a server in the Metro segment. The session data
from this Meta Workrooms connection has been archived and is accessible at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnQpoMByT3E.

Scenario |  Avg Bitrate (Mb/s) |  Sd Bitrate (Mb/s) |  Avg Latency (ms) |  Sd Latency (ms) |  Avg Packet (bit) |  Peak Packet (bit)
---|---|---|---|---|---|---
Gaming on headset (4G) |  0.38 |  0.95 |  19.6 |  0.43 |  409 |  4200
Gaming on headset (FTTH) |  0.38 |  0.20 |  12.1 |  0.32 |  450 |  18000
Gaming on external PC |  157 |  32 |  6.2 |  0.01 |  4,556 |  64,054
360-video streaming |  60 |  12.8 |  23.6 |  1.7 |  1,147 |  2,800
Meta Workrooms |  15 |  1.95 |  12.5 |  0.14 |  700 |  18,000
Table 1: Summary of traffic profiles observed in all scenarios (Avg: average
value, Sd: Standard deviation)

##  4 Discussion: Impact on telecommunication infrastructure

The rise of metaverse applications presents significant challenges and
opportunities for Telecom Operators, necessitating substantial investments to
enhance network capabilities. These enhancements include increased bandwidth,
reduced latency, and improved reliability, along with advanced Edge Cloud
infrastructure to support these bandwidth-intensive applications.

Operators are currently focusing on several key AR/VR use cases, such as
industrial remote operations, tele-education in remote or global settings with
satellite network assistance, and entertainment applications like gaming and
virtual tourism. These applications demand stringent network requirements to
ensure a seamless and immersive user experience. Some of these requirements
include [15]:

  * •

Extreme Low Latency: Essential for real-time social interactions and precise
remote control in industrial settings, demanding network latencies ranging
from 1 ms to less than 0.1 ms for the Radio Access Network (RAN). Specific
latency needs vary by application, such as 0.5-2 ms for dynamic haptic
feedback and up to 20 ms for Ultra-High Definition (UHD) video over
significant distances.

  * •

High Symmetrical Transmission Bandwidth: To support the complex data needs of
AR/VR and HTC experiences, both downstream and upstream data rates will need
to increase significantly. These rates range from tens or hundreds of Mbit/s
for 4K video to 1 Tbit/s for holographic communications, ensuring a high-
quality multisensory experience (QoE) for users.

  * •

Service Availability: The reliability of these services is critical, with
targets ranging from 99.999% (five nines) to 99.9999999% (nine nines)
availability, indicating the network’s expected operational excellence.

To meet the capacity requirements of these emerging use cases, more bandwidth
needs to be made available in the RAN and other network segments, potentially
through the exploitation of new frequency bands, massive MIMO processing, and
innovative fiber technologies such as multi-core fibers or hollow-core fibers.

As AR/VR services and applications continue to gain traction, telecom
operators must anticipate and address the associated challenges, including the
need for higher bandwidth, lower latency, and improved reliability. This work
aims to shed light on the bandwidth capacity requirements and latency of
popular AR/VR applications through four different real experimental settings
on the MetaQuest3 headsets, and its potential impact on the network.

##  5 Summary and conclusions

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are novel technologies that
have revolutionized the way we perceive and interact with the digital world.
Both AR and VR alter our perception of reality but in different ways. AR
overlays digital content onto the real world, enhancing our surroundings with
additional information or virtual objects; VR on the contrary immerses users
in a completely virtual environment, isolating them from the physical world
and transporting them to simulated realms. Thanks to their impressive
immersive features, these devices have penetrated 1-2% households in North
America, Europe, and China and are expected to grow exponentially in the next
years.

For these reasons, telecom operators must proactively prepare for the
potentially explosive growth of these services and applications, equipping
their networks to handle a scenario where Metaverse traffic becomes the
leading source of streamed traffic.

This article has analyzed the traffic generated into the network by four
applications (two games, 360 VR streaming, and Metaverse teleconference) in an
AR/VR Meta Quest 3 scenario.

We note that the network traffic closely mirrors that of online gaming or
video streaming, potentially requiring additional bandwidth and stricter
latency measures due to the complex immersive requirements of Metaverse
applications.

## Acknowledgements

The following projects have contributed to the development of this work:
Project ITACA (grant PDC2022-133888-I00) funded by Agencia Estatal de
Investigación (MCIN, Spain); SNS project SEASON (grant 101096120) funded by EU
Horizon-Europe Program. This work is also supported by the R&D project
PID2022-136684OB-C21 (Fun4Date) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033.

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