Contextual Color Shaders

[Xevion]

Custom shaders applied to individual Boids that color their mesh based on contextual things like their Velocity (or Angle).

For example, a custom shader that colors individual Boids based on their angle in a linear gradient. A shader like this would make individual 'flocks' much easier to see, as flocks would have similar colors different from other flocks. Colliding flocks may be red and green before they collided, unleashing a sporadic wave of yellow with tendrils of red and green as they struggled to get past.

A shader like this would benefit from #4 as the twitching would likely cause noticeable flickering as they shifted back and forth and 'bounced' off each other.
This is definitely a experimental feature, but would likely be one of the most 'flashy' should I get it to work.

[Xevion]

There's potential for me to create shader-like behavior without relying on actual Shaders, but I'll need to do experiments. I'm going to start calling these shaders 'heatmaps', even if technically they aren't heatmaps specifically. But the effect I want from both is the same: the visualized density of a certain phenomenon within a certain area.

Some other ideas:

• Infection Heatmap
  • A topical heatmap that may work with the Separation rule to identication what Boids have 'touched' a specific Boid, simulating a infection of sorts. I should look up COVID-19 simulations, infection logic and such.
• Flock Heatmap
  • A heatmap that colors specific flocks based on proximity. This is most likely a very difficult heatmap, and likely won't be performant without some kind of extremely fast flock identification algorithm.
• Velocity Magnitude Heatmap
  • A heatmap that colors Boids based on their speed (not velocity, which is a signed vector!). This speed could be calculated based on the Velocity's absolute magnitude.