3D Pathfinding and Collision Avoidance Using Uneven Search-space Quantization and Visual Cone Search
This addresses the problem of 3D pathfinding for game developers, offering incremental improvements over existing methods.
The research tackled the lack of efficient 3D pathfinding in game engines by proposing two algorithms: one for uneven quantization to reduce node count and another using ray-casting for runtime path generation without a grid, with simulations in Unreal Engine comparing results to A*.
Pathfinding is a very popular area in computer game development. While two-dimensional (2D) pathfinding is widely applied in most of the popular game engines, little implementation of real three-dimensional (3D) pathfinding can be found. This research presents a dynamic search space optimization algorithm which can be applied to tessellate 3D search space unevenly, significantly reducing the total number of resulting nodes. The algorithm can be used with popular pathfinding algorithms in 3D game engines. Furthermore, a simplified standalone 3D pathfinding algorithm is proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm relies on ray-casting or line vision to generate a feasible path during runtime without requiring division of the search space into a 3D grid. Both of the proposed algorithms are simulated on Unreal Engine to show innerworkings and resultant path comparison with A*. The advantages and shortcomings of the proposed algorithms are also discussed along with future directions.