He moved out to Hollywood which is a nasty place to work, and he kept his eye on his goal. He was less interested in marching bands and more interested in the way flocks of birds, herds of animals and schools of fish moved. If you could render one bird, you could render hundreds. Sutherland demonstrated back in the 1960s with his hens and chicks. The problem was scripting them. That’s where Craig’s work came in, and he did a magnificent job. You’ve probably seen his algorithms in action in countless feature films and shorter works.

Interestingly, he was not initially inspired by great swarms of pigeons in Rome, herds of wildebeest in Africa, or schools of wrasse in the Coral Sea. He was inspired by the mechanism behind the good old fashioned American precision marching band.

I wonder if this analysis can also be applied to bees? It makes you think where the arrow mark or question mark they come up with in cartoons can also be done in reality.

I live in an area where there are a lot of gnats during the summer, and while you would describe their behavior as more like swarming than flocking, they also exhibit remarkable group behavior. They often swarm in well defined globs in the air — usually at a height ideal for inhaling into your sinuses or lungs — and the whole group will move up and down and horizontally almost as if they are of one mind.

This summer I’ve occasionally been encountering a family of three very large cranes, and am always amazed how fly in a tight perfectly synchronized unit.

Six years ago ony my “finding myself” trip through Europe, I exited Rome’s central train station just at dusk to see _thousands_ of birds doing the most incredible coordinated maneuvers. I came back every night for a week to watch, jotted down some ideas on how to simulate the behavior using simple agents, and when I went home I tried to learn some graphics programming, but never got far with it. Then I went back to grad school and got busy with “regular” stuff and never came back to it.

I’m glad somebody is working on it, and it looks like they were inspired by the same view from the train station.

I’ve watched starlings flock before but I had no idea they could make these dazzling patterns. They must be enjoying it surely.