This is cool stuff. Microsoft Research is working on a project, currently called Donnybrook, which will allow network-efficient and responsive MMO deathmatch games. The system adjusts the number of player updates a player receives based upon which player(s) he is focused on. So if you have two particular players in your viewframe, you will receive updates about them more frequently than other players. Those that are getting updated less frequently are taken over by the ‘Guidable AI’, a system which is supposed to be much better than the traditional dead-reckoning technique.
Donnybrook has been tested on the Quake III engine with promising results. The tech has quite a bit more development and testing ahead of it, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself implementing a new network architecture somewhere down the road.
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