I don't know anything about how a bird navigates as part of a flock, but I guess it uses its eyes to see the other birds. And I also imagine that it pays more attention to birds nearby than to far away birds. Maybe it even uses the area covered on its retina by the other bird to assign to assign it some "weight" in its "navigation algorithm". In that case, then the influence of other birds would decrease in inverse proportion to the square of the distance :)
On Jan 28, 9:09 am, Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hin...@laposte.net> wrote: > On Jan 28, 2009, at 5:00, Eric Lavigne wrote: > > > In "Objective CAML for Scientists" [1] pages 92-101 Jon Harrop > > demonstrates a rapid numerical solution for a multibody gravitation > > problem, which looks similar to the problem you are solving. He > > refers to the method as Fast Multipole Method [2,3]. It trades a > > little accuracy for a big performance gain. Oh, and his > > implementation in OCaml > > The Fast Multipole Method is an algorithm for rapidly calculating all > pairwise interactions between a set of objects, provided that the > interactions have a particular form. The method was developed for > gravitational interactions (e.g. between planets or stars) and for > electrostatic interactions (e.g. between atoms), which are two types > of interactions that have the same mathematical form: the energy is > inversely proportional to the distance between two objects. > > It is possibe to generalize the Fast Multipole Method somewhat, but > it remains a technique for a limited (though important) class of > interactions. It is rather unlikely that it will be of any use for > simulating a flock of birds. > > Konrad. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
