Urban / City Warfare (merged thread)

[Norfolk]

Very interesting Mike. I seem to recall that a similar (or perhaps an early version of this) program was used recently to model the passage of elements of Lee's army through Gettysburgh in the hours leading up to the main battle. As Wilf says, even given the present status of AI, this is a tool with real and vast potential.

When I saw your name Mike, I thought it was vaguely familiar, and now I see that you were from that other English-speaking regiment; welcome to the SWC. Haven't you published in the CAJ and a few other places already?

[jcustis]

Someone I know loosely from the Lightfighter.net board is a computer graphics animation guy who works on Hollywood production, and is a CA Reservist with time in Iraq. I mentioned this thread to him and he replied with the link, which appears to be software he and his kin use to create environments and characters.

http://www.massivesoftware.com/whatismassive/

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

[selil]

Someone I know loosely from the Lightfighter.net board is a computer graphics animation guy who works on Hollywood production, and is a CA Reservist with time in Iraq. I mentioned this thread to him and he replied with the link, which appears to be software he and his kin use to create environments and characters.

http://www.massivesoftware.com/whatismassive/

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

There is a difference between the two. The animation stuff is the representation of the mathmatics behind the crowd modeling. There a variety of epidemiology simulations that show infection rates (you see them in the bad sci-fi movies poorly showing density and infection rates). A lot of the crowd modeling software follows infection rates only the infection is an idea or emotion. There are a lot of other factors that go into the "what" of the animation.

Thinking about bad sci-fi movies and patterns of movement. In the bad sci-fi movies they show infection spreading rapidly as a wave form across the nation. That is usually far from the truth. Reality is you get corridors of infection following road systems between large city centers, and jumps from air travel to the hub cities. Not take a look at crowd dynamics.

A crowd must follow physical ground paths. So waves and other patterns aren't going to work. Hydraulic theories of pressure and concentration help to inform crowd movement theorist though. Other things that help in imagining what needs to be animated are issues such as incident, obstructions, distance to injury ratio's, and even things like mental state. A good simulation allows you to easily adjust those parameters like in the infection simulations you can adjust regions of the map for population distance, technology level, etc (All those hofstedder elements).

I don't know if that helps at all, but there is some GIS stuff coming from Google that is supposed to mimic these type of questions pretty close.

[Rex Brynen]

There is a difference between the two. The animation stuff is the representation of the mathmatics behind the crowd modeling. There a variety of epidemiology simulations that show infection rates (you see them in the bad sci-fi movies poorly showing density and infection rates). A lot of the crowd modeling software follows infection rates only the infection is an idea or emotion. There are a lot of other factors that go into the "what" of the animation.

There has been substantial attention to this in the computer/video gaming industry too, especially in SIM-type games which require mass crowd interactions. An amusement park simulation game, for example, might model client routing through the park, ride selection (and the deterrent effects of long lines and ride pricing), consumer expenditure (food, drinks--with the later sometimes linked to the saltiness of the former), propensity to vomit (really! and often linked to food intake and the severity of the ride), proximity of washrooms, cleanliness (a function of janitorial staff numbers and routines), littering, crime rates, crowding, and "contagion" effects from the satisfaction/dissatisfaction of the crowd.

Although there are a lot of invisible shortcuts and cheats involved (a lot of game AI doesn't really predict/respond, but peeks at information that ought to be realistically hidden from the agent), it is sophisticated stuff nonetheless.

[Mike Innes]

but there is some GIS stuff coming from Google that is supposed to mimic these type of questions pretty close.

Interesting point. I'm not a GIS specialist, but I see it increasingly being used for conflict modeling. Where things get tricky, at least for this technoramus, is figuring which tools to use for which environment. I keep harping about terrain complexity, but I don't think there's any avoiding the issue - developing some sort of framework understanding of it is the whole point of what we want to do with the Terrain Complexity Lab.

To wit, from the new COIN FM (p. B-10):

Terrain analysis in COIN includes the traditional examination of terrain’s effects on the movement of military units and enemy personnel. However, because the focus of COIN is on people, terrain analysis usually centers on populated areas and the effects of terrain on the people. Soldiers and Marines will likely spend a great deal of time in suburban and urban areas interacting with the populace. This is a three dimensional battlefield. Multistory buildings and underground lines of communication, such as tunnels or sewers, can be extremely important. Insurgents also commonly use complex natural terrain to their advantage as well. Mountains, caves, jungles, forests, swamps, and other complex terrain are potential bases of operation for insurgents.

But this is the really interesting one (p. 3-15):

Insurgents often seek to use complex terrain to their advantage. Collection managers do not ignore areas of complex terrain. In addition, insurgents use “seams” between maneuver units to their advantage. (Seams are boundaries between units not adequately covered by any unit.) Collection managers must have a means of monitoring seams in order to ensure the enemy cannot establish undetected bases of operation.

And finally, from he who guided the crafting of the COIN FM, Gen. David Petraeus:

We used to just focus on the military terrain... now we have to focus on the cultural terrain.

Battlefield sim, or battlespace sim, would have to take into account all these esoteric considerations and operating planes. Theoretically, there are all sorts of postmodern perspectives that have poked at this - witness Foucault, Virilio, Baudrillard, Der Derian. Interesting to see the technology, at least bits and pieces of tech innovation, evolving and accumulating to the point where a "closed world" (imagine all this shiny digital kit applied, but in a surveillance society or global COIN context) becomes increasingly possible. These sims aren't the same as tracking technologies, but as predictive tools, they precede the tracking, and would therefore facilitate it.

[Mike Innes]

I'm a boob. Paul Torrens is at Arizona State University, not the University of Arkansas, as I'd mentioned in the thread-opener post. My apologies to Torrens, my high school geography teacher, and my parents for embarrassing our ancestors.

[Mike Innes]

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

I'm pretty sure that Torrens demonstrates the how behind it - if you watch through the video on his site, there's a segment that demonstrates the sort of motion capture technology used to create characters for the big screen, using live models wired up to sensors.

[Mike Innes]

Very interesting Mike. I seem to recall that a similar (or perhaps an early version of this) program was used recently to model the passage of elements of Lee's army through Gettysburgh in the hours leading up to the main battle. As Wilf says, even given the present status of AI, this is a tool with real and vast potential.

When I saw your name Mike, I thought it was vaguely familiar, and now I see that you were from that other English-speaking regiment; welcome to the SWC. Haven't you published in the CAJ and a few other places already?

Not me. There was at least one other Mike I serving in 1 PPCLI at the same time. Thanks for the greets. Nothing in CAJ, but just published Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens (sorry, shameless plug), along with a few articles in SCT and Civil Wars.