The recent developments in the research area of virtual and augmented reality, along with related technologies, indicate a strong focus on enhancing user experience through improved quality assessment, collaborative environments, and adaptive systems. A significant trend is the advancement in image and video quality assessment techniques tailored for specific applications, such as robotic intelligence and egocentric spatial videos, highlighting the importance of embodied experiences in these domains. Additionally, there's a notable push towards optimizing edge caching and rendering systems for virtual reality (VR) and cloud gaming, aiming to meet stringent latency and quality of experience (QoE) requirements. The integration of AI-driven wearable technologies and the exploration of new realities within the eXtended Reality (XR) framework are also emerging as key areas of interest, with potential applications in sustainability, healthcare, and daily life. Collaborative augmented reality (AR) applications are being developed with a focus on cross-platform compatibility and real-time interaction, facilitated by innovative architectures like SARA. Furthermore, the research community is addressing the challenge of cybersickness in VR through real-time, cross-modal prediction models, aiming to enhance user comfort and engagement. The field is also witnessing advancements in the assessment of stereoscopic image quality and the development of benchmarks and models for image harmonization quality assessment, reflecting a broader interest in improving visual content for immersive experiences.

Noteworthy Papers

• Embodied Image Quality Assessment for Robotic Intelligence: Introduces an embodied image quality assessment framework and a new database, highlighting the difference between robot and human image quality assessments.
• XRFlux: Virtual Reality Benchmark for Edge Caching Systems: Proposes a benchmark for evaluating VR delivery systems using edge-cloud caching, addressing the dynamic nature of VR and the challenges it poses for edge caching.
• Adrenaline: Adaptive Rendering Optimization System for Scalable Cloud Gaming: Presents a system that optimizes game rendering qualities based on user-side visual quality and server-side rendering cost, significantly improving service quality and user capacity.
• Structural Similarity in Deep Features: Image Quality Assessment Robust to Geometrically Disparate Reference: Offers a unified approach to image quality assessment that is robust to geometric disparities between reference and test images, achieving state-of-the-art performance.
• SARA: A Microservice-Based Architecture for Cross-Platform Collaborative Augmented Reality: Describes an architecture for developing cross-platform collaborative AR applications, facilitating real-time interaction and the reuse of collaboration model components.