Our new paper on "Holes and Clashes in Simulated Soccer: When a Real-Time Simulation System Meets Compute-Hungry Agents" addresses the challenges and implications of (lacking) synchronization between agents in real-time multi-agent simulation systems.

Based on two specific manifestations of mis-synchronization in 2D Soccer Simulation, termed holes and clashes, the paper makes two contributions: First, it provides a thorough historical review of the problem's existence and urgency of occurrence, covering the time from the very early beginnings of the RoboCup initiative in the late 1990s till today. Second, it presents the results of an exhaustive empirical study that reveals quantitatively what impact synchronization problems may have on the playing performance of a simulated soccer team.

See the full paper PDF.