Unreal Engine 5 plugin for implementing boids.
This project was heavily inspired by Sebastian Lague's project. (mentioned in the references)
This implementation of boids uses the basic 3 rules of flocking:
- Coherence
- Alignment
- Separation
as described by Craig W. Reynolds.
A "Steer to Avoid" behavior has also been implemented to allow the simulation to fly naturally in the huge landscapes that Unreal Engine allows.
The project contains RayCaster and BoidHelper which were implemented in Sebastian's video to correctly find an unobstructed direction. However I decided to use Sphere Trace and the normal of the impact point to change the direction of the boid, which was easier performance wise. These helpers are kept there for future reference. (And also it's a pretty cool simulation)
The Boid Manager keeps reference of the boids.
Rules can be added easily by adding to the boid's current velocity and the plan is to add as much behavior rules as possible.
One thing I that I did differently than most other implementations I've seen - In the implementation of the separation force, I've used the inverse of the distance between the boid and the perceived flock instead of the distance itself. This allows the boid to smoothly cruise around the flock instead of strictly keeping it at the designated range whenever it gets too close to it's mates. This can probably be applied to the majority of the rejecting forces but needs further testing.
Performance still needs to be improved as 100 boids already have a big impact on FPS. A simple solution for this would be to add spatial partitioning.
Coming soon
Add the contents of this project to your project's Plugins folder: YOUR_PROJECT_NAME\Plugins\Birdoids
or your Engine's Plugins folder: PATH_TO_ENGINE\Engine\Plugins\Birdoids
Open the editor and enable the plugin through the Plugins menu (Edit -> Plugins)
- Add spatial partitioning
- Add a way to easily add rules (?)
- Adde more rules:
- Perching
- Wind
- Scattering
- Add control over attraction point
- Add preset flock types