Boids • Hacker News Board

Re: Boids

#31

Post by jaltekruse » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

Might be a dumb thing to post on hacker news, but I tried using the word boid or boids in Scrabble and my competitive wife wouldn't let me because it wasn't in the dictionary. It fit so well too!

Re: Boids

#32

Post by jzting » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

I also have an implementation [0] that shows the paths of the boids. Based on the parameters, some very interesting patterns emerge!

[0] http://jzlabs.com/

Re: Boids

#33

Post by diekhans » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

It is a beautiful paper, well worth reading the original.

Re: Boids

#34

Post by mar77i » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

bschne wrote: post #12

Dan Shiffman over on The Coding Train has a nice walkthrouhg of implementing this in P5.js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhjuuHl6qHM

Recently did that code as presented using pygame, but I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet, that might be a good idea, though.

Re: Boids

#35

Post by gdubs » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

I recently implemented boids in a compute shader [1]. It’s using Apple’s Metal framework, and rendered in 3D. The boids are simple triangles, and I added a bit of specular shading to give them a little bit of a “shimmer” as they flock.

I implemented an NVIDIA algorithm for running n-body simulations on the GPU. The constraint is memory access, which can freeze up in a case like this. [2]. Converting from CUDA to Metal wasn’t too bad.

1: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4t4ewCplfR/?igshid=1uxnng6idsqb...

2: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems3/part-v-physics...

edit: Here's a low-res animated GIF for anyone who doesn't want to click an instagram link: http://gregorywieber.com/assets/images/art/murmuration.gif

Re: Boids

#36

Post by vortico » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

jsilence wrote: post #3

Could that be used to simulate the pandemic?

No. It's an unrelated set of rules. The best way to simulate a disease is to model each person in the country as an individual agent. Even a naive movement model for humans won't look like anything like bird flocking.

Re: Boids

#37

Post by miniatureape » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

I posted this simple boid drawing toy a year or two ago: https://miniatureape.github.io/boiddraw/

Re: Boids

#38

Post by foreigner » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

Good old Boids! I implemented a clone of Boids in C as my senior project in high school. It included 3D wireframe graphics from scratch. My teacher said it was "A nice screensaver".

Re: Boids

#39

Post by escot » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

> Incidentally, "boid" is also a New York Metropolitan dialect pronunciation for "bird".

Re: Boids

#40

Post by banana-slug » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

Nice boid-related tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtqltqcQhw