Games@Large Graphics Streaming Architecture

In coming years we will see low cost networked consumer electronics (CE) devices dominating the living room. Various applications will be offered, including IPTV, VoIP, VoD, PVR and others. With regards to gaming, the need to compete with PlayStation and Xbox will require a radical change in system architecture. While traditional CE equipment suffers from having to meet low BOM (bill of materials) targets, dictated by highly competitive market and cable companies targeted costs, consoles enjoy superior hardware and software capabilities, being able to offset hardware and BOM costs with software royalties. Exent Technologies is leading the European FP6 Integrated Project Games@Large, whose mission is to research, develop and implement a new platform aimed at providing users with a richer variety of entertainment experience in familiar environments, such as their house, hotel room, and Internet Café. This will support low-cost, ubiquitous gameplay throughout such environments, while taking advantage of existing hardware and providing multiple members of the family and community the ability to play simultaneously and to share experiences. This paper focuses on one of the innovative aspects of the Games@Large project idea - the interactive streaming of graphical output to client devices. This is achieved by capturing the graphical commands at the DirectX API on the server and rendering them locally, resulting in high visual quality and enabling multiple game execution. In order to support also small handheld devices which lack hardware graphics support, an enhanced video method is additionally provided.