PathEngine's tiled 3D content process is based on the application of a horizontal tiling to the existing 3D content processing functionality. The set of source data elements in each tile is processed independantly, with the resulting ground pieces then combined back together for run-time pathfinding.

This ensures that things like process complexity and peak memory load are completely decoupled from overall world complexity, and that total processing times scale essentially linearly with world size.

But the biggest advantage is the possibility for incremental world updates, with processing only required for tiles local to changed content, and with the possibility also for per tile processing to be distributed across threads (to take advantage of multicore CPUs) or even across multiple machines, for the fastest possible update times.

Tiled result pieces can be combined either into a single ground mesh, or into a set of federated overlapping tiles (for use with the SDK's existing 'mesh federation functionality), which then has the effect of also decoupling things like pathfinding preprocess generation and run-time query times from total world size.

Demo applications are included in the PathEngine evaluation SDK, with source code, for tiled 3D content processing with cached per tile results, and also for the construction of federated meshes from tiled ground pieces.

Please see the following page (in the online PathEngine documentation) for more details:

PathEngine was founded in 2000 based on experience providing pathfinding and AI to the games industry for more than 10 years.

The PathEngine SDK is built around an advanced implementation of points-of-visibility pathfinding on three-dimensional ground meshes. The approach enables PathEngine to provide both pathfinding and collision in tight integration against a single, sophisticated, agent movement model that takes agent shape into account and seamlessly supports overlapping geometry, with dynamic obstacles directly integrated into this movement model.

PathEngine features in the genre-breaking MMORPG 'Granado Espada' (by IMC Games) (released in the west as 'Sword of the New World'), 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Operation Troy' (by Dimps Corporation), 'Titan Quest' (by Ironlore Entertainment), 'Pirates of the Burning Sea' (by Flying Lab Games) and many other triple-A titles.

For a full list of developers and titles already using the PathEngine SDK please see:

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