How feasible is it to calculate which 2D sprite to show on each client for a multiplayer game?

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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Hi. I am working on a ‘2.5D’ multiplayer game - I have a 3D world, but the characters consist of three flat planes, one with the Front material on it, one with the Side material on (two-sided material) and one with the Back material on. Like so:

225987-setup.png
225987-setup.png442×674 143 KB

It looks great from the front and the side, but very bad from an angle:

225988-front.png

225989-side.png

225990-45.png

So I have two questions.

  1. There seems to be an issue with the side rectangle not obstructing the part of the front rectangle which it is in front of, what could be causing this?

  2. Given that this setup is basically to accommodate multiple simultaneous views (multiplayer game with players taking third-person views in the world) of a 2D character, is it practical to rather than doing this, to compute the appropriate single sprite to show to each client independently, based on the character’s location relative to each player? A client-side calculation of which sprite to show the current client (across all clients)?

Thanks.