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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMMichael" data-source="post: 6545653" data-attributes="member: 6685730">I got hit by a whopper the other day.  Hopefully some learned folk in here can help me suss this out:Many first-person shooter games do a lot of CPU outsourcing.  There's always a "host" system, but in order to make the game run faster and smoother, the "client" systems make a lot of the decisions for the host.  One of these decisions is called "client-side hit detection":Client-side hit detection:[sblock]In client-side hit detection, each system gets intermittent reports from the host about where the other players in the game are.  When you shoot, or "hit," an opponent, it's your system that decides that the hit actually occurred, not the host.  Where this gets fuzzy: since each client gets its updates about player position at different times, you can see an opponent in one position while your opponent sees himself somewhere else (probably nearby).  When you shoot your opponent, the hitting takes place where you see him, generally not behind cover, even if he sees himself as behind cover.[/sblock]Here's where it gets interesting: in a first-person shooter (say, Battlefield 3, which I was playing at the time) there is no single, ultimate game going on in the present.  Each client has a slightly different game going on from every other client.  The host does some processing and records what actually happened, but this recording becomes the past.  The future is based on a set of rules upon which all systems, client and host, agree.Does this resemble general relativity?I'm drawn to the example that two observers are witnessing an event occur.  One, of course, is moving at "a high rate of speed."  So when the event occurs, each observer sees the event occur at a different time.  What's usually implied is that event though the event occurs at different times to each observer, they are still supposed to be in the same universe.They are both in the same game.Two observers can see the event occur at different times because they are each on a different client-system.Does Schrödinger’s cat live or die?  It depends on which system hit-detects his box opening first.If everything is relative, how do we agree that only one past, or history or game, occurred?  Because the host-system records the history upon which all clients eventually agree.Why do quantum particles pop in and out of existence in empty space?  That's your client-system waiting to see what the host declares is history.Why can't we say exactly where a sub-atomic particle is, without changing its position by measuring it?  Because our client-systems have an idea of where things are, where players are, but this is fuzzy due to the fact that each client-system, and the host, can change where a particle is at just about any time.Einstein should have been a gamer.</blockquote>

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