On the impact of interactive eXtended Reality: Challenges and opportunities for multimedia research

Extended Reality (XR) has been hailed as the new frontier of media, ushering new possibilities for societal areas such as communications, training, entertainment, gaming, and cultural heritage. However, despite the remarkable technical advances, current XR applications are in their majority local and individual experiences. In fact, three great barriers stand between current technology and remote immersive interactive life-like experiences, namely content realism, by means of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, motion-to-photon latency, and accurate human-centric driven experiences able to map real and virtual worlds seamlessly. Overcoming these barriers will require novel solutions at all elements of the end-to-end transmission chain. In this panel, together with the leading experts of the SIGMM community, we will explore the challenges and opportunities to unlock the next generation of interactive XR applications and services