Beginning iOS Game Center and Game Kit: For iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Prediction and Extrapolation

Let's take another example into consideration: this time, a racing game. Each player controls a car that is guided around a track. We know where each car is at the start of the race. We also know that any messages we send to the server will have an inherited latency due to the round-trip network time. Should we not update the car positions until the server tells us to? That would result in a very choppy racing game. To account for this very common issue, we use predictive technology.

We know that racecars will, more than likely, continue on a current course for the next handful of frames. We will assume things will continue doing what they are doing until the server tells us otherwise; if the user steers slightly ...