Goal-oriented dead reckoning for autonomous characters

Abstract This paper proposes innovative concepts for shared state management of distributed virtual characters on a computer network. Firstly, visual soundness is presented as a property that is essential to high quality networked virtual environments and that is related to the autonomy of virtual components. Secondly, state consistency is defined in terms of physical and mental states and it is shown to be in opposition to visual soundness. Thirdly, the usual concept of dead reckoning is extended by exploring the idea of giving autonomy to remote replicas. This new concept, named goal-oriented dead reckoning, is particularly advantageous for the state management of autonomous characters.

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