Indicative routes for path planning and crowd simulation

An important challenge in virtual environment applications is to steer virtual characters through complex and dynamic worlds. The characters should be able to plan their paths and move toward their desired locations, avoiding at the same time collisions with the environment and with other moving entities. In this paper we propose a general method for realistic path planning, the Indicative Route Method (IRM). In the irm, a so-called indicative route determines a global route for the character, whereas a corridor around this route is used to handle a broad range of other path planning issues, such as avoiding characters and computing smooth paths. As we will show, our method can be used for real-time navigation of many moving characters in complicated environments. It is fast, flexible and generates believable paths.