[ODE] Re: Deterministic simulation on multiple clients

[Henrik Grimm]

Harald Schmid wrote:
> Why don't you run the simulation on the server and the renderer at the
> clients? As far as I understand, you want to show the same simulation
> from different angles. So you need several views, and one simulation
> only.

Sure, that is a possibility, but then I need to send the whole 
simulation state (or at least what is visible to the user) in every 
message instead of just the events (x-axis, y-axis, buttons, etc.). 
Also, since I want to use existing code as much as possible, it is often 
easier this way since I don't need to separate the simulation from the 
rendering (I just replace the input stream).

> 
> Also are you sure that even identical hardware won't give you
> different rounding errors?

Well, I am no expert in hardware, but I think it is quite unlikely that 
rounding is non-deterministic. Also note that, as I stated in my 
original post, sometimes the clients are perfectly synchronized.

/Henrik Grimm