[simspark-devel] The order of receiving commands and sending senses

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Hi all,<br>
In the current form, the simulator works likes this:<br>
- sending senses to agents<br>
- receiving commands from agents<br>
- simulating one cycle (which takes the most processing time)<br>
<br>
This causes an nondeterministic behavior: if the agent sends commands
right after receiving senses, and there is no latency in this period,
the simulator will run the commands in the same cycle. But, if for some
reason the commands reach the server with some latency, these commands
will be received and executed in the next cycle. This could be one of
the main reasons that some agents behave differently when they connect
to a remote server instead of a local one. When using a local
simulator, most of the commands will reach the server in the same cycle
as received senses, but when running over a network they'll be executed
in the next cycle (because of network latency). <br>
I think this behavior is not desirable, and trying to maintain fairness
between agents in a multi-threaded architecture would be hard. My
suggestion is to swap the order of sending senses and receiving
commands, so that the received commands will be always run in the next
cycle:<br>
<br>
- receiving commands from agents<br>
- sending senses to agents<br>
- simulating one cycle (which takes the most processing time)<br>
<br>
Is there any reason to maintain the current behavior instead of my
suggestion?<br>
<br>
Have fun,<br>
Hedayat<br>
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