Efficient Mesoscopic Simulations for Persistent Agents in 3D-Applications and Games
To save computational resources, traffic simulations in virtual environments and digital games often remove entities from the simulation once they leave the user's visual field of view. This can lead to inconsistencies within the simulated world and break the immersive effect. To counter this effect, we propose a system consisting of a regular microscopic simulation around the user and an additional less detailed simulation layer beyond the user's immediate surroundings. The new layer performs a mesoscopic simulation based on the FastLane model, utilizing elements from queuing theory. With this hybrid approach it is possible to simulate a reasonable amount of detailed traffic participants as well as a much larger number of less detailed, but persistent traffic participants. As a result it is possible to simulate entities with complex behavior close to the user while maintaining reasonable traffic densities throughout the entire system.