NajVR: Ultra-Low-Latency Remote VR Streaming

This work, carried out by researchers at the Information Processing and Telecommunications Center (IPTC), presents NajVR, a plug-and-play architecture that enables low-latency remote rendering of unmodified virtual reality (VR) applications. The system offloads computationally intensive rendering tasks to a remote server or cloud/edge infrastructure while allowing lightweight client devices to handle only tracking and display, thus reducing hardware requirements on the user side.

NajVR introduces LHE, a novel GPU-accelerated video codec designed to minimize encoding latency and remain robust under packet loss — two critical factors for VR streaming. Unlike traditional codecs, LHE uses Perceptual Relevance and elastic downsampling to adapt encoding to scene complexity, and it incorporates fovea protection, leveraging eye-tracking data to preserve maximum quality where the user is looking. The architecture operates without modifying VR applications or their runtime, thanks to a virtual driver that emulates VR hardware on the server side.

Experimental results show that NajVR achieves round-trip latencies slightly above 20 ms in high-bandwidth LAN environments and around 50–60 ms in WAN setups, demonstrating that remote VR can remain viable even over Internet connections. LHE reduces encoding latency by up to 75% compared to commercial H.264 implementations and maintains visual quality even under high packet loss.

Potential applications extend beyond entertainment and gaming. The system can support remote training, collaboration, teleoperation in hazardous environments, remote maintenance, medical consultation, telesurgery support, and future immersive telepresence solutions requiring high realism with minimal local hardware.

Bibliographic reference:

Santos-Paz, J.A., García Aranda, J.J., Alarcón Granero, M. et al. NajVR: low-latency plug-and-play remote rendering for interactive virtual reality applications. Computing 107, 232 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-025-01589-7

Rodrigo García Carmona: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iptc-upm/

For more information: www.iptc.upm.es

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