The aim of this project is to populate the 'dead' virtual
cityscapes that are appearing in increasing numbers from labs and companies
around the world. At UCL we also have one such model, it represents 160 square
km of London. To populate it we need to simulate thousands of virtual humans
(avatars).
Here we will look at various issues regarding rendering and behaviour
simulation for these urban environments. Such as for example, collision
detection, rendering of the animated avatars, improved illumination and
simulation of pedestrian movement.
Yiorgos
Chrysanthou, principle investigator
Franco Tecchia, research
fellow, funded by the EPSRC project GR/R01576/01
Celine Loscos, research
fellow, funded on the equator IRC
project
Ruth Conroy, research
fellow, funded on the equator IRC
project
We already have a basic system working. The following images are snapsots of the system. They show a small region of Central London which is populated with ten thousand avatars and run in real-time on a Pentium II PC.
Rendering: We are currently improving the quality of the rendering adding shadows and allowing the variety of the people.