An Enhanced Dead Reckoning Model for Physics-Aware Multiplayer Computer Games

Abstract

Consistency is a key requirement of networked multiplayer computer games. Several methods exist that strive to reduce network traffic in an attempt to maintain an acceptable level of consistency. Currently, these methods update an entity's states based on measures of its spatial and temporal inconsistencies. However, these measures do not, in general, consider inconsistencies associated with the entity's interactions with other environmental objects, which can potentially lead to significance differences in what users see and experience. This is particularly evident in physics-aware, peer-to-peer distributed interactive applications such as networked multiplayer computer games. Thus, this paper proposes a novel entity state update technique for such applications. In doing so, the concept of a physics-consistencycost is introduced. The proposed technique consists of a dynamic authority scheme for shared objects and an enhanced physics-aware dead reckoning model with an adaptive error threshold. The former places a bound on the overall inconsistency present in shared objects, while the latter minimises the instantaneous inconsistency during users' interactions with shared objects. The performance of the proposed entity state update mechanism is validated through simulation, the results of which are presented and discussed within.

Hot Area Targeting Dead Reckoning for Distributed Virtual Environments

“…Furthermore, McLoone et al base their threshold value on the physical consequences a rollback incurs. To this end, a metric named physics-consistency-cost [10] is proposed to quantify the overhead of rollback for the interactions in DVE. Similarly, inspired by the time-space consistency measurement proposed by [25], Roberts et al propose a time-space threshold [16] to tune the traditional DR threshold with network characteristics to improve data consistency across the network.…”

Σvp

“…GPGPU has found its way also into mobile and embedded systems for a variety of applications, including sensor-data processing and computer vision [6,21]. Furthermore, these systems are increasingly integrated in large-scale networks to form distributed embedded systems and support such applications as multiplayer online gaming [5,15].…”

Interest Manager for Networked Driving Simulation Based on High-Level Architecture

“…However, games involving fast interactions between players can be degraded severely by poor network performance [9]. The so-called dead reckoning and entity interpolation techniques are developed to overcome this problem [10]. The basic idea of dead reckoning/entity interpolation is to extrapolate/interpolate data of simulated entities in the multi-player game based on their predictable behavior.…”