SMART360: Simulating Motion prediction and Adaptive bitRate sTrategies for 360° video streaming

Adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms are used in streaming media to adjust video or audio quality based on the viewer’s network conditions to provide a smooth playback experience. With the rise of virtual reality (VR) headsets, 360° video streaming is growing rapidly and requires efficient ABR strategies to also adapt the video quality to the user’s head position. However, research in this field is often difficult to compare due to a lack of reproducible simulations. To address this problem, we provide SMART360, a 360° streaming simulation environment to compare motion prediction and adaptive bitrates strategies. We provide sample inputs and baseline algorithms along with the simulator, as well as examples of results and visualizations that can be obtained with SMART360. The code and data are made publicly available.