| dc.description.abstract | One of the most serious issues holding back the widespread of 3D content on Internet has been their inaccessibility due to large data volume. Many compression and progressive transmission techniques, as well as format standards, have been proposed in recent years to make 3D streaming increasingly viable for the efficient and accessible delivery of 3D content. However, existing proposals have yet to seriously address one of the most important issues in practical adoption -- a system’’s scalability in terms of the number of concurrent users. We argue that due to 3D content’’s large data volume and interactive nature, client-server architecture, with its inherently fixed resource availability and high cost, will not be suitable to support popular Internet-scale 3D streaming.
We propose the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for 3D streaming, and argue that due to the non-linear access patterns of 3D content, P2P 3D streaming is a new class of applications apart from existing media streaming and requires new investigations. We also present FLoD, the first P2P 3D streaming framework that allows clients of 3D virtual globe or virtual environment (VE) applications to obtain relevant data from other clients while minimizing server resource usage. To demonstrate how FLoD applies to real-world scenarios, we build a prototype system that adapts JPEG 2000-based 3D mesh streaming for P2P delivery. Experiments show that server-side bandwidth usage can thus be reduced, while simulations indicate that P2P 3D streaming is fundamentally more scalable than client-server approaches. Certain improvements and extensions of the original FLoD framework are also presented.
In this dissertation, we define both the problem and solution spaces for P2P 3D streaming, by outlining its requirements, challenges, and categorizing existing proposals. Open questions are also identified to facilitate the design of future systems.
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