Hybrid path planning for massive crowd simulation on the GPU

In modern day games, it is often desirable to have many agents navigating intelligently through detailed environments. However, intelligent navigation remains a computationally expensive and complicated problem. In the past, the continuum crowds algorithm demonstrated the value of using a dynamic potential field to guide many agents to a common goal location. However this algorithm is prohibitively resource intensive for real time applications using large and detailed virtual worlds. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid system that first uses a coarse A* path finding step. This helps to eliminate unnecessary work during the potential field generation by excluding areas of the world from the potential field calculation. Additionally, we show how an optimized potential field solver can be implemented on the GPU using the concepts of persistent threads and inter-block communication. Results show that our system achieves considerable speedups compared to existing path planning systems and that up to 100,000 agents can be simulated and rendered in real time on a mainstream GPU

The ICOCOON Virtual Meeting Room: A Virtual Environment as a Support Tool for Multipoint Teleconference Systems

Part 5: Mixed Reality and 3D WorldsInternational audienceGlobalization and increasing collaboration between remote teams drive the need for teleconference systems. However, currently no videoconferencing system matches the face-to-face experience for a business meeting with many participants in a flexible and affordable manner. In search for a better solution, we created a Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) application that visualizes key events detected using computer vision (e.g., participant entering the meeting room, talking, presenting) in a 3D virtual environment. The goal was to provide a good sense of overview to users when many meeting participants - represented by 3D avatars - from remote locations join a teleconference. In this paper, a technical overview of the working prototype - built using 3D game technology - is presented. Also, feedback from multiple user tests performed during the development of the prototype is discussed and presented as a set of recommendations. From the technical perspective, we found that existing 3D game technology is mature, affordable and contains the features needed to build the VMR application. From the users’ and experts’ feedback, we conclude that the VMR has merits as a teleconferencing support tool accompanying a video stream that conveys more detailed non-verbal communication of the active speaker