Flocking as a series of matrix operations

This week, I’ve been getting a grasp on the Eigen BLAS library for C++ in order to convert Robert Hodgin’s Cinder flocking tutorial into a linear algebra operation. This is intended to be an intermediary step as I move towards flocking as a GPGPU calculation. My guess is that if I can nail down the order of operations as matrices, it will lend itself to multithreaded and highly parallel processing.

So far, I have rewritten the separation algorithm as well as the gravitational pull towards the origin. There’s an unexpected interaction between boids at close range which I cannot explain, even after comparing the matrix operations and the traditional code in calculations by hand, but they do seem to right themselves after a bit of a tango.

In addition to rewriting the flocking algorithm, I have attempted to fold in the OpenNI skeleton interaction and an OpenGL shader pipeline with limited success. The OpenGL shaders compile, but I haven’t gotten to getting anything interesting to work (not even basic lighting), mostly because I’ve spent several days squashing mathematical bugs in the flocking code. I did manage to hack in the OpenNI skeleton and use it as a repelling force to particles that are influenced by the separation code. This will probably look a lot more interesting when the rest of the flocking code is implemented, and I have some point lights attached to the skeleton joints.

To conjoin the behavior of the boids with the skeleton, I expanded the size of the position matrix to include 15 additional columns, which hold the positions of the joints. Before user tracking begins, these points are randomly distributed, but once the user is obtained, the positions are overridden and are controllable. There are all kinds of problems with the render: scaling being the most obvious, but also some tearing in the frames. I’m also concerned that by scaling down to a world of about 10 units, I’m running into floating point nonsense. I’m trying to negotiate another problem that I’m having understanding the aperture and focal length of my stereoization example code.

I’ll continue to work on it this weekend by first finishing the flocking code and then trying to render with some materials and lighting. Here are some notes on the matrices:

http://yfrog.com/h251863569j