Psycho-physical Crowds

Abstract

Human crowds are becoming an increasingly important component of video games and virtual environments. However, as these virtual worlds become more realistic, the simulation of human crowds must become more sophisticated to keep pace. Much recent work in the field of crowd simulation has focused on improving aspects relating to navigation and collision avoidance in order to create complex, collision free trajectories. However, this paper argues that an equally important aspect of creating believable crowds is simulating aspects beyond navigation such as the internal psychological state of a simulated agent and external physical forces. We also discuss how recently proposed methods can be used to simulate these physical and psychological aspects of crowd simulations while maintaining high-quality, collision free motion.