ARTIFICIAL ANIMALS IN VIRTUAL ECOSYSTEMS

This paper presents an architecture to support the simulation and visu alization of virtual ecosystems in a virtual reality system. The ecosy stems are inhabited by artificial animals. Each animal in the ecosyste m is an agent that interacts autonomously with the dynamic environment and the other animals. A small part of the ecosystem in the estuary o f river Sado was simulated. Mullets, dolphins and jellyfishes were mod eled according to the purposed architecture and the simulation runs on top of a virtual reality library that provides a real-time visualizat ion. The possibility of a networking solution with multiple remote use rs controlling some of the animals and thus using the virtual ecosyste ms as shared virtual worlds is also mentioned in this paper. Some scre enshots are presented along with the text to illustrate the graphical aspects of the simulated objects. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All r ights reserved.