Labs · Realtime
Real-time collaboration.
Everyone on this page shares one live room, kept in step twenty times a second.
The game below is the demonstration. Your turret moves the instant you press a key, everyone else sees it within a fifth of a second, and the room checks every move before it counts. Open a second window to meet yourself, or send the link to someone. If it's quiet, a couple of bots keep you company.
Connecting…
- WASDor arrows to move
- Mouse to aim
- Click or Space to fire
- Esc to stop playing
Play full screen for two thumb sticks: the left one moves, the right one aims and fires.
Step by step
What happens when someone makes a change.
The same loop, twenty times a second, for everyone in the room.
01
Your change shows at once
What you do appears on your own screen the instant you do it. Nobody waits on a round trip to the server to see their own work. In the game, that's your turret moving the moment you press a key.
02
One copy of the truth
The room holds the single agreed version of everything: who is where, what changed, and who changed it. It checks every change before it counts, so nobody can do what the rules don't allow.
03
Everyone else sees it
Twenty times a second the room sends every screen what changed. Other people's changes are smoothed between updates, so they glide into place instead of jumping.
Work stays put, and so do people. In the demo, every shot leaves paint on a shared floor, so the next visitor walks in on everything that came before. Scroll away and your turret stays, faded and marked as reading, so others can see you're still here. Close the page and it leaves with you.
Where it stands
What the room holds, and what it never sees.
It holds
- A position, a colour and a made-up name for each turret
- Roughly which town you're connecting from, for the “joined from” line
- Scores for this visit, and the last 400 splats on the floor
It never has
- Your name, your email or an account
- A cookie, or anything that follows you to the next visit
- Your IP address. The town is read from it on the way in, and it is never stored
Where else it fits
Anything several people work on at once.
Live auctions
Bids land on every screen the moment they're placed, against a clock everyone agrees on.
Seat maps
Seats go grey as they're picked, so two people never reach the till for the same one.
Shared boards
Plans, rotas and whiteboards that several people edit at once, with everyone's cursor showing.
Live dashboards
Numbers that move on their own, without anyone pressing refresh.
If several people need to see each other's changes as they happen, this is the engine underneath. The game is just the most fun way to show it.
Talk to us about yours