Hardware-accelerated dynamic clustering of virtualcrowd members

In this study, a hardware-accelerated dynamic clustering of moving virtual entities technique is proposed. By clustering virtual entities, both clustered and unclustered virtual agents became more aware of other agents' topological configurations. Clustering is based on their continuously changing velocity and position vectors. The proposed clustering technique efficiently uses graphics processor's parallel processing capabilities. Therefore, almost no additional central processing unit overhead is required to bring the clustering information into the simulation. In addition, in this paper, how cluster information can be used on top of the proposed virtual human steering technique is explained. The results show that by using the dynamic clustering, the number of collision in the simulation reduces, and the velocities of the the agents in the simulation increase. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.