SOFTWARE SYSTEM FOR REDUCING THE APPEARANCE OF LATENCY IN A MULTI-USER ENVIRONMENT

The present invention provides a software system used for transmission of information between multiple users interacting on a distributed computer network such as the Internet. The system comprises a central server computer connected to a plurality of client computers by means of a communication network such as the Internet. The server authoritatively models the state of the virtual environment in which the users interact. To eliminate latency each client predictively models the state of the virtual environment before the client is made aware by the server of commands issued by other users. Each command issued by a user is forwarded to the server. The client does not wait for the server to send back a response. Instead the client updates its own predictive model of the virtual environment to reflect the effects of the command it sent to the server. It displays these effects immediately thereby eliminating the latency in transmission between server and client. When the central server receives the command it updates its authoritative master model of the state of the virtual environment to reflect the effects of the command. Then the server separately or compares its master computation with the client's predictive computation to resolve any inaccuracies that may exist in the client's model. If the server judges these inaccuracies to be significant it sends a list of corrections to the client which are incorporated into the client's predictive model. If the client's predictive model of the virtual environment is kept close to the true state of the server's master model the client's computations will be acceptably accurate. Because the client displays these results immediately and then the true results when the server's corrections arrive the human perception is that the game is responding instantly with the required accuracy.