Boids Flocking

'Basic flocking model consists of three simple steering behaviors which describe how an individual boid maneuvers based on the positions and velocities its nearby flockmates.' - Craig Reynolds

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

Boids was a computer model of coordinated animal motion such as bird flocks and schools of fish and was based on three dimensional computational geometry which is generally used in computer animation or computer aided design. The basic simulated flocking creatures were designed boids and the standard flocking model is made up of three steering behaviours which detail how an individual boid manoeuvres based on the positions and velocities of its nearby flock mates.

Individual boids have access to whole scene geometric descriptions but the flocking requires that it reacts only to flock mates in a specific range around itself. The range is characterised by a distance (measured from the centre of the boid) and an angle, measured from the boids trajectory of flight. Flock mates outside the local range are ignored, this can be likened to a limited model of perception but is generally thought more correct as a defining region in which flock mates influence a boids steering.



It included predictive obstacle avoidance and goal seeking. Obstacle avoidance allowed the boids to fly through simulated environments while dodging static objects. For applications in computer animation, a low priority goal seeking behaviour caused the flock to follow a scripted path.