Flocking Simulation

View on GitHub

A 2D simulation of Craig Reynolds' classic boids algorithm built in Unity3D, where hundreds of independent agents produce lifelike flocking behaviour from just three simple rules.

The Rules

Each boid looks at its neighbours and applies three steering forces:

1. Separation – steer away from boids that are too close to avoid crowding.
2. Alignment – steer towards the average heading of nearby boids.
3. Cohesion – steer towards the average position of nearby boids to stay with the flock.

No boid has any global knowledge of the flock. The emergent group behaviour – splitting around obstacles, reforming, spiralling – arises entirely from these local interactions.

Implementation

Built in Unity3D with C#. Inspired by the Processing flocking example by Daniel Shiffman.

← Projects