People in shared spaces

Crowd Flow / Local Navigation

Watch people move through shared space, adjusting to one another and to the obstacles around them. As each person makes small local choices, larger streams, lanes, and bottlenecks begin to appear.

Watch local choices become shared flow

Watch people move through shared space, adjusting to one another and to the obstacles around them. As each person makes small local choices, larger streams, lanes, and bottlenecks begin to appear.

What to watch: soft lanes form in two-way traffic, streams bend around pillars, and narrow gates slow movement without anyone directing the group.

Explanatory notes

Each person has a destination, but no one receives a central traffic plan.
Nearby neighbours create gentle side-step and spacing forces, making streams separate where possible.
Pillars and gate edges repel locally, so the crowd bends around constraints like water around rocks.
Narrow exits increase pressure and slow movement, making bottlenecks visible without panic styling.

Observe

People steer toward simple destinations while making small local adjustments around neighbours, pillars, gates, and exits.

Controls

Preset

Explore the flow

The exhibit keeps the model simple: every person walks toward a goal, makes room locally, and responds to the shape of the space.

Head for a goal: People aim for exits or destinations on the far side of the shared space.
Avoid locally: Nearby neighbours create gentle spacing, so no person needs to understand the whole crowd.
Flow around rocks: Pillars and gate edges repel nearby movement, bending streams through open space.
Find lanes: Two-way streams separate when repeated side-steps make one path feel easier than another.

Visual overlays

Keep the default view calm, or reveal gentle reading cues.

Exit and goal zones Soft stream traces

Advanced tuning

Crowd density82 More people make lanes and bottlenecks easier to see; fewer people keep the scene quieter. Walking speed1.05 The comfortable target speed for each person. Avoidance strength1.15 How assertively people make room around neighbours and obstacles. Obstacle count4 Adds muted pillars into the walking space. Exit width0.46 A narrower opening makes bottleneck behaviour more visible. Bottleneck strength0.32 Adds subtle turnstile-like drag near tight gates.

Applications

Public-space planning
Station and concourse design
Evacuation interface prototyping
Multi-agent navigation