Using User Perception to Determine Suitable Error Thresholds\ud for Dead Reckoning in Distributed Interactive Applications

摘要

Entity state update mechanisms are readily employed in Distributed\udInteractive Applications (DIAs), particularly in networked games.\udThese mechanisms use prediction techniques in order to reduce the\udnumber of update packets sent across the network, while\udmaintaining a high level of consistency from the remote user’s point\udof view. These mechanisms only send update packets when the local\uduser’s actual behaviour differs from the predictive behaviour by a\udcertain value, often referred to as the error threshold. In practice,\udthis value is arbitrarily chosen and typically reflects what ‘appears’\udto be suitable. It has been illustrated in various other media that\udpsycho-perceptual measures can be used to greatly improve\udcompression techniques, while maintaining satisfactory end-user\udexperience. The best example of this is the MP3 compression used in\udaudio. This paper describes a preliminary study designed to collect\udinformation relating to a subject’s perception of a networked\udcomputer game. The main motivation behind this work is to\udinvestigate if psycho-perceptual measures can be used to obtain\udappropriate error threshold measures for entity state prediction\udmechanisms. Here, we employ Dead Reckoning as it is the simplest\udand most commonly used of these mechanisms in distributed\udgaming. The experiment outlined in this paper attempts to\uddetermine if an error threshold can be chosen from the users’\udperception, where user feedback is determined via linguistic\udvariables. Furthermore, the effects of convergence, the speed of the\udentity and the shape of the entity trajectory are also examined from\uda psycho-perceptual viewpoint. The results are presented within.