IRWIN AND JOAN JACOBS CENTER FOR COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Animation of Flocks Flying in Line Formations

The coordinated flight of bird flocks is a pleasant and attractive sight. While most previous approaches have focused on animating cluster formations, this paper introduces a technique for animating flocks that fly in certain patterns (socalled line formations). We distinguish between the behavior of such flocks during initiation and their behavior during steady flight. We provide a biologically-motivated technique for animating bird flocks, which produces plausible and realisticlooking flock animations.