Our biggest risk with our product right now is latency, specifically how long it takes for data from the paddle to be processed and sent to the headset. We are focusing on two aspects to improve latency: communication channels and communication protocols. For communication channels, we are looking at bluetooth plugins to send paddle orientation data to our headset and AWS servers. Depending on how fast bluetooth is, we could switch to WiFi-direct among other methods if bluetooth’s latency is too high. For communication protocols, we are focusing on what data to send and where/when to send it. Last week we had conversation about sending paddle data to a server, which can project the movement of the ping pong ball and send those projections to each player’s headset. This creates a buffer of data that limits the amount of network communication and thus lowers latency. What we are focusing on now is how to hide the delay where the server needs to calculate and send the ball projection data. We are still working on finalizing the protocols right now, but if there are certain latencies that we cannot optimize, we can sacrifice some of the realism of the game to allow for smoother gameplay. An example could be having the ball pause for a second at one end of the table to allow the server to calculate the projected movement of the ball towards the player.
Moving forward, we are going to continue to work on our communication protocols as well as researching faster communication channels. We also received a shipment of our hardware, which we plan on testing out to get comfortable with how it works and look for any problems that we may need to work around. Everything so far is on schedule.