Dead Reckoning For Networked Games
Networked games and simulation tools routinely use dead reckoning to predict where an actor should be right now, using its last known kinematic state (position, velocity, acceleration, orientation, and angular velocity). This is primarily needed because it is impractical to send network updates at the rate that most games run, 60 Hz. The basic solution starts by projecting into the future using linear physics:
This formula is used to move the object until a new update is received over the network. At that point, the problem is that there are now two kinematic states: the currently estimated position and the just received, actual position. Resolving these two states in a believable way can be quite complex. One approach is to create a curve (ex cubic Bézier splines, Catmull-Rom splines, and Hermite curves) between the two states while still projecting into the future. Another technique is to use projective velocity blending, which is the blending of two projections (last known and current) where the current projection uses a blending between the last known and current velocity over a set time.
Read more about this topic: Dead Reckoning
Famous quotes containing the words dead, reckoning and/or games:
“I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)