LionFire
LionFire is a proprietary virtual reality gaming simulator that uses Rogers Gaming Commission's private Ansible Network to provide the connection between racers and licensed video feeds to consumers. The LionFire source code is one of the company's most closely guarded secrets. It uses a hardware decoding dongle on racers' virtual reality rigs to prevent the code from being decompiled.
Popular Applications
Light Racer
Light Racer is one of the most popular software packages offered in the LionFire library. The digital racing sport was initially released as a proof of concept for the communication layer of the virtual network, but rapidly grew into a cultural phenomenon across the empire as the first truly interstellar sport in the Rogers Republic--and possibly the galaxy.
Tactix
Tactix is best described as a Chess-like strategy game. While the game itself differs quite substantially from the classic boardgame from Earth, it is the closest comparison that Earth's population is able to understand.
Commune
Commune is effectively a sub-platform of LionFire focused specifically on social events. While it is capable of operating on its own, Commune is most often paired with other virtual products to enhance their overall experience. The most prominent example being the virtual arenas within the Light Racer application.
The Starchild Gaming Network
The Starchild gaming network relies on a complex hybrid communication platform that leverages a combination of the Gahnxite Ansible Network and more traditional, localized communication methods. Due to the nature of the Ansible Network's Mother Stone, end-to-end communication between all users is fundamentally impossible as it would require each individual device within the network to possess a fragment of the stone.
Ansible Hubs
As an alternative to unsustainable end-to-end communication, the Rogers Gaming Commission constructed a network of broadcast hubs throughout the empire. Outfitted with a fragment of the Mother Stone, these hubs receive messages from the primary Starchild network and then encode the data for local distribution via more common (and more readily extensible) communication methods.
Network Fragmentation
See the complete article Network Fragmentation.
Another significant benefit of the hybrid network solution is that it mitigates the risk of network fragmentation caused by the loss of Mother Stone fragments when devices are discarded or lost. According to the Gaming Commission's marketing department, gaining access to the underlying source code is exceedingly difficult as most of LionFire's processes are executed strictly on the Starchild network. Due to the levels of encryption on the data and strict regulations regarding the distribution of Gahnxite fragments, the RGC has touted their system as "nearly impenetrable," which some organizations consider a challenge.