Hans, what exactly did you think a spline was but an ordered series of points? We''re not talking bezier curves or NURBS here but points connected in order.

Mike

quote: Original post by ahw

I think Chris Crawford document on Autonomouse Agents Steering Behaviour would be damn useful here ... you would use maybe the flow field to influence how the cars should move around the tracks. I guess really, using splines is in the same vein, but that''s just me.
youpla :-P

Isn''t that really Craig Reynolds'' steering behavior you are referring to here?

Eric

quote: Original post by MikeD

How did you decide the speed a car wanted to be driving at with your splineless system? Were corners and curves marked out on the route? Also how did the cars decide where to be at any given moments due to the curves in the track?
With splines I simply had a target point, which varied in distance from the front of the car, which the car had to adjust it''s steering to follow. Did knowledge of the angles of the oncoming curves allow you to determine, heuristically, the best y to hit the curve at?

Mike

The speed for the car was based on a number of factors. The type of sector the car was in (straight or curve), where other cars were located at, the sectors (looked ahead 2-3) that were coming up for the car.

Speed for curves involved the radius of the curve where the car was and where it wanted to go. Speed for straights was considered to be defaulted to "go as fast as the car can" and then adjusted based on braking distance for upcoming sectors.

Yes, knowledge of the angles of the oncoming curve allowed a calculation to determine whether to be inside or outside on the curve, depending on which way the other curve turned relative to the current curve.

Like I said before, I have replaced this with a Drive Line path following approach, because the performance (of the car driving) is basically just as good and the CPU is alot less.

Eric