Behavioral assumption-based prediction for high-latency hiding in mobile games

While the popularity of mobile games increases with advances in processing power of mobile devices, multi-player games in fast-paced genres using the communication capabilities of these mobile devices are still rare, mostly because of the significant round trip times of the current mobile networks. Effective latency hiding techniques exist for LAN and even for WAN connection speeds, but these techniques fail in the domain of mobile networks, as the latencies can be up to 2 magnitudes larger than a typical WAN configuration. This paper introduces a new high-latency hiding paradigm based on behavioral assumptions, designed to be suitable for racing titles. Although these assumptions limit the accuracy of predicting unexpected behavior, they allow for significant improvements in hiding network latency, making it possible to create a real-time multi-player race game using today's GPRS network.

@InProceedings { DB05a,
  author       = "Carpentier, Giliam J.P. de and Bidarra, Rafael",
  title        = "Behavioral assumption-based prediction for high-latency hiding in mobile games",
  booktitle    = "Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Computer Games - CGAMES'05",
  pages        = "83--88",
  month        = "nov",
  year         = "2005",
  address      = "Angouleme, France",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2005/DB05a"
}