Fair and Efficient Dead Reckoning-Based Update Dissemination for Distributed Virtual Environments

Due to diverse network latencies, participants in a Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) may observe different inconsistency levels of the simulated virtual world, which can seriously affect fair competition among them. In this paper, we investigate how to disseminate Dead Reckoning (DR)-based updates with the objectives of achieving fairness among participants and reducing inconsistency as much as possible. We first propose an optimized bandwidth allocation scheme for sending updates to overcome the drawbacks of uniform bandwidth allocation and the local-lag technique. Then, we integrate bandwidth allocation with an indirect relay method and develop algorithms to select relay routes for minimizing inconsistency under various bandwidth allocation schemes. Our proposed scheme and algorithms are evaluated using traces collected from a real car racing game as well as the real Internet latency data. The experimental results show that the proposed optimized bandwidth allocation scheme significantly reduces inconsistency while maintaining fairness among participants and that integrating the optimized scheme with our proposed relay setup algorithm further improves consistency.