Video capture of Oxford Circus. Streams of people are clearly visible in this dense area.
In games, entertainment, medical and
architectural applications, the creation of populated virtual city environments
has recently become widespread. In this paper we want to provide a technique
that allows to simulate up to 10,000 pedestrians walking in real-time.
Simulation for such environments is difficult as a trade off needs to be found
between realism and real-time simulation. This paper presents a pedestrian crowd
simulation method aiming at improving the local and global reactions of the
pedestrians. The method uses a subdivision of space into a 2D grid for
pedestrian-to-pedestrian collision avoidance, while assigning goals to
pedestrians to make their trajectories smoother and coherent. Goals are computed
automatically and connected into a graph that reflects the structure of the city
and triggers a spatial repartition of the density of pedestrians. In order to
create realistic reactions when areas become crowded, local directions
are stored and updated in real-time, allowing the apparition of pedestrians
streams. Combining the different methods contributes to a more realistic
model, while keeping a real-time frame rate for up
to 5,000 simulated pedestrians.
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Video capture of Oxford Circus. Streams of people are clearly visible in this dense area. |
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Video showing the behaviour of an agent (tracked green cell, leaving a trail behind). Each agent takes the colour of the goal it has to reach. Goals are represented by cubes and are connected by straight coloured lines. Arrows in blue are left by the agents and represent the stored direction that influences decision of following agents. |
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Integration of the behaviour in the system. In grey, are represented the accessible area (pedestrian crossings and pavements). |
