Large Scale Fish Schooling Simulation

A screenshot of the simulation while it was running

Inspiration

We were inspired to create this because the schooling behavior of fish is very beautiful.

What it does

This project attempts to simulate the schooling behavior of fish through particle interactions.

How we built it

We built it using Unity. Our first approach used the particle system of Unity to improve performance. This approach had minimal optimizations, and would begin to struggle around 1000 fish. Our second approach attempted to use a hashing algorithm to improve the performance of the system greatly, but we did not manage to get it to work. Projected performance would have been magnitudes greater than the previous implementation.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into major issues with implementing the improved algorithm. It was our team's first time using Unity and C#, and also our first time working with large scale simulations. We had to spend many hours researching algorithms and what could be done to make our code run efficiently.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of sticking through with the project to the end, and for submitting our first ever hackathon project.

What we learned

We learned that defining scope at the start of the project is very important, especially if you want to meet a close deadline. We also learned so much about efficient algorithms for finding nearby neighbors within a radius.