/pcg-forests-ecs

Submitted in part for CGVC '24. A procedural forest generation approach, using ECS to massively optimise existing FON-based approaches to forest generation in games

Primary LanguageC#MIT LicenseMIT

Real-time Data-Oriented Virtual Forestry Simulation for Games

Benjamin Williams1, Thomas Oliver1, Davin Ward1 & Christopher Headleand1

A paper accepted to CGVC 20242

Trailer

cgvc-trailer.mp4

This repository

This repository serves as an open-source solution to our recently published optimisation strategy for the real-time simulation of virtual forestry. In our approach, we leverage the power of data-orientation, spatial partitioning, multithreaded parallelisation and native IL compilation to achieve a 45x speedup against serial implementations. We utilise Unity's Entity-Component System to enable a high degree of optimisation for real-time forest simulation.

Our approach offers a unique method upon which the growth of virtual forestry can be simulated in real-time, using the cutting edge bio-inspired plant competition algorithms; a previously unachievable goal.

By making this project public, we strongly encourage future work and collaboration in leveraging the power of Unity's ECS to massively optimise entity-oriented algorithms. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together.

Getting started

To get started with the project, make sure you have Unity 2022.3.4f1 or later installed. Then, download or clone the repository with:

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/StaffsUniGames/pcg-forests-ecs.git

From here, open up the project and open the main scene with File > Open Scene > Assets/ecs/scenes/main.unity. Following this, try to play the project by using the Play button. If nothing happens, you may need to enable the sub-scene in the hierarchy. More information is detailed on this here.

Paper details

As mentioned at the start of this document, this repository is an open-source project outlined in a paper submitted to CGVC2024. Currently, the paper is undergoing minor revisions. The details below will be updated in due course.

Category Detail
Title Real-time Data-Oriented Virtual Forestry Simulation for Games
Authors B. Williams, T. Oliver, D. Ward & C. Headleand
Publication Year 2024
Venue The 42nd Computer Graphics & Visual Computing Conference (CGVC'24)
Paper link here
DOI 10.2312/cgvc.20241218

Media

Below is a list of media showcasing our strategy.

3D visualisation of example forest
Growth of forest with high spread distance
Growth of forest with low spread distance
Emergent seasonal growth with low spread probability

License

The source code within this repository is released under the MIT License.

Footnotes

  1. Staffordshire University Games Institute; School of Digital, Technologies, Innovation and Business; Staffordshire University, UK. 2 3 4

  2. The 42nd Computer Graphics & Visual Computing Conference (CGVC)