Visual Quality Assessment for \(360^\circ \) Videos

In the last few years, with the advancement in display and rendering technologies, the consumption of VR applications is increasing, with \(360^\circ \) videos being an example. Increasing numbers of higher-quality videos can now be watched on smartphones or HMDs using platforms such as YouTube. The overall QoE of a \(360^\circ \) viewing session depends on the degree of immersion or presence of the user, the degree of simulator sickness he/she experiences, and the media (audio and video) quality, which also interact with each other. Therefore, assessing the quality of \(360^\circ \) videos is an essential step in improving overall QoE. In this chapter, the impact of HMDs, encoding settings (resolution and bitrate), voting methods, and different delay values (for tile-based streaming) are discussed related to the perceived video quality for \(360^\circ \) videos. Furthermore, conclusions are drawn from the analysis, and recommendations are provided on the improvement of the perceived visual quality.