USE Together, a WebRTC-Based Solution for Multi-user Presence Desktop

Abstract

Ubiquitous is one of the essential features of what should be the desktop of the future. In practice, this concept covers several issues related to multi-users collaboration, remote applications control or remote display and secure access over IP networks. With its standards and capabilities, WebRTC provides a new vision of real-time communications services that can raise these challenges. In this paper we present a WebRTC-based middleware solution for real-time multi-users remote collaboration. It allows a full desktop setup where everyone can see what other users are doing and where they position themselves in the shared workspace. In contrast to standard WebRTC's Peer-to-Peer architecture, our system supports a synchronous communication model through a star topology. It also improves network bandwidth efficiency by using hardware video compression when the GPU resource is available, though assuring a very low latency streaming. In this way, we can maintain awareness and sense of presence without changing the usual practices of the users in front of a desktop. Several use cases are provided and a comparison of advantages and drawbacks of this solution is also presented to guide users in applying this technology under real-life conditions.

Multi-user predictive rendering on remote multi-GPU clusters

“…In contrast to standalone applications, the displayed image is here requested to the server at each display refresh and any interaction with the virtual scene such as camera motions and material picking trig- gers a server object update. Finally, users interact remotely with the client GUI application through the USE Together infrastructure [9]. With this middleware technology, several users can simultaneously share a native desktop environment or a specific application window from any device running a web browser and supporting the WebRTC standard.…”

“…Lucas et al [9] proposed USE Together as a WebRTC-based middleware enabling remote users collaboration through the web. With this infrastructure, delocalized co-worker can remotely share a native desktop environment or a specific application window, with all user interactions broadcasted in real-time.…”