Simulating and Visualizing Real-Time Crowds on GPU Clusters

 

Benjamín Hernández¹, Hugo Pérez^1,2, Isaac Rudomin¹, Sergio Ruiz³, Oriam de Gyves⁴, and Leonel Toledo⁴

 

¹ Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain. benjamin.hernandez@bsc.es, isaac.rudomin@bsc.es

² Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. hugo.perez@bsc.es

³ Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México, Mexico. sergio.ruiz@itesm.mx

⁴ Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México, Mexico. odegyves@itesm.mx, ltoledo@itesm.mx

 

Article received on 23/06/2014.
Accepted on 28/09/2014.

 

Abstract

We present a set of algorithms for simulating and visualizing real-time crowds in GPU (Graphics Processing Units) clusters. First we present crowd simulation and rendering techniques that take advantage of single GPU machines. Then, using as an example a wandering crowd behavior simulation algorithm, we explain how this kind of algorithms can be extended for their use in GPU cluster environments. We also present a visualization architecture that renders the simulation results using detailed 3D virtual characters. This architecture is adaptable in order to support the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) infrastructure. The results show that our algorithms are scalable in different hardware platforms including embedded systems, desktop GPUs, and GPU clusters, in particular, the BSC's Minotauro cluster.

Keywords: Crowd simulation, visualization, HPC, GPU-clusters, real-time, embedded systems.

 

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