Pilot
Interactive demo: pilot a boid flock
This simulation runs entirely in your browser. Tune the separation, alignment, and cohesion weights, along with the perception radius, and watch the flock go from a scattered cloud to grouped flight — or fall back apart.
What the sequence shows
- 250 birds released at random, scattered across the whole sky. Each one sees only its nearest neighbours — none of them sees the flock.
- Three rules, nothing else: steer away from the too-close, align with your neighbours, close in on the group.
- Nobody leads, there is no flight plan — and yet there they are, gathered into a single body sweeping along as one.
- Now I start over, exactly as before — same birds, same start — with one of the three rules missing: alignment.
- This time nothing takes. They cross, they dodge, and they stay dust.
- Alignment goes back on, nothing else changes — watch them find each other. The controls are yours.
What you can try
- Run the flight again without alignment — they cross paths and stay dust
- Take cohesion away — all heading the same way, and yet never together
- Take separation away — nothing keeps them apart any more: the flock crushes into a point
- Put the three rules back
Each button reruns the experiment with a single setting changed — and doubles as a shareable link.