SIGMA360 Project Team Holds Kick-off Meeting at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences

Project Team Meeting Held in Zagreb

The first official meeting of the SIGMA360 project team was held on 2 February 2026 at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb. The meeting brought together the project team to review the key elements of the project, discuss the scientific and operational framework, and align the next steps for the first project year.

At the beginning of the meeting, the team reviewed the basic information about the project. SIGMA360, short for Spherical & Gestures Media Archive – 360° Quality Study, is funded by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU initiative. The project officially started on 1 October 2025 and will run until 30 September 2029, with a total duration of 48 months.

The meeting also provided an overview of the project team and the roles of its members. The SIGMA360 team brings together researchers and experts from the University of Zagreb, combining expertise in video quality assessment, multimedia systems, subjective testing, accessibility, sign-language evaluation, data analytics, and project implementation. This interdisciplinary structure is essential for addressing both the technical and human-centred aspects of immersive 360° video quality.

A significant part of the meeting was dedicated to the research idea behind SIGMA360. The team discussed the growing importance of video streaming services and the specific challenges introduced by immersive 360° video. Unlike conventional video content, 360° video places substantially higher demands on networks, compression, delivery systems, and end-user devices. These demands can directly affect the perceived quality of the service, particularly when users experience interruptions, rebuffering, resolution changes, or audio-video synchronization problems.

The discussion further addressed the relationship between network performance and Quality of Experience (QoE). The team reviewed how changes in network conditions, congestion, user mobility, radio conditions, and bandwidth limitations may lead to visible degradation in video delivery. These issues are especially important in the context of immersive services, where the user’s perception of quality may differ from traditional video viewing scenarios.

Special attention was given to the distinction between objective and subjective quality assessment methods. Objective methods rely on technical analysis of video content, such as resolution, frame rate, compression level, bitrate, and image degradation. Subjective methods, on the other hand, involve users who evaluate video quality under controlled conditions. SIGMA360 aims to connect both approaches by creating a structured video repository supported by subjective ratings and metadata that can be used for the development and validation of predictive quality models.

Project Objectives and Research Focus

The team reviewed the main project objectives, with particular emphasis on the development of an open online repository of immersive 360° video sequences. The repository will include at least 300 video clips, generated from original and systematically degraded video content. These video sequences will vary according to parameters such as frame rate, resolution, compression level, and scene complexity, enabling reproducible comparison of different quality assessment approaches.

An important and distinctive component of SIGMA360 is the inclusion of Croatian Sign Language content. A subset of the video material will include professional sign-language speakers, allowing the team to investigate how video degradation affects not only visual quality, but also the comprehensibility of sign-language communication. The project plans to collect at least 6,000 ratings from hearing participants and 600 ratings from deaf participants for the sign-language video subset, following relevant international recommendations and standards.

The team also discussed additional scientific and dissemination objectives. These include the development of an objective model for predicting user experience, publication of open-access journal papers, conference papers, public events, guest lectures, accredited training activities, and the design of a graduate-level course titled “Multimedia Streaming and Quality Engineering.” These activities are intended to ensure that the results of SIGMA360 contribute not only to scientific research, but also to education, public engagement, and long-term knowledge transfer.

The work plan presented at the meeting outlined the project workflow from video capture to public release. The planned process includes recording diverse 360° scenes, calculating spatial and temporal information, preparing metadata, creating degraded versions of video sequences, conducting subjective testing, collecting Mean Opinion Scores and sign-language comprehensibility ratings, developing fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy prediction models, validating those models, and ultimately making the repository publicly available with persistent identifiers and open access principles.

The meeting also covered the project’s financial framework and administrative procedures. The team reviewed the overall project budget, cost categories, procurement process, and reporting requirements. Particular attention was given to equipment procurement, training activities, dissemination costs, participant fees, sign-language content production, and administrative tracking through the institutional financial system. The team also discussed the need to register equipment and project outputs in the relevant systems and to ensure proper visibility of EU funding.

In the final part of the meeting, the team discussed several organizational and administrative issues, including project monitoring, templates for project documentation and presentations, acknowledgement text for publications, CRORIS registration, possible future changes in team composition, and the development of common web visibility for funded projects. The kick-off meeting provided a shared understanding of the project’s goals, obligations, and first-year priorities, establishing a clear foundation for the implementation of SIGMA360 in the months ahead.