Murmuration Playground

Strong separation blows the flock apart; aggressive homing pulls it back together. Watch cycles of fragmentation and reform.

High front bias and edge alignment with wide personal space. Visible wave-like patterns propagate through the flock.

Tight formation at high speed with velocity coloring. A good starting point for density wave experiments — try slowly increasing Speed braking.

A persistent hawk hunts the flock. Birds within the escape radius scatter with boosted speed. Speed braking enabled so you can see the panic wave propagate.

Saves your current settings as a preset you can switch back to. Stored in your browser.

Opens a .json or .txt preset file and adds it to your saved presets.

Copies the current slider values to your clipboard as JSON — handy for pasting into a message or note.

Bird count 3000 Total birds in the flock. Changes rebuild the simulation.

Sim speed 1.00 Scales simulation time. Higher = faster movement.

Orbit: follow the flock. Boid's eye: chase cam behind a random bird. Split: both side-by-side.

Sep neighbors 7 Nearest neighbors considered for separation. Fewer = only avoid the closest birds.

Ali/Coh neighbors 14 Nearest neighbors for alignment and cohesion. More = longer-range coherence.

Separation 3.0 Strength of push-away from neighbors within minimum distance.

Personal space 2.0 Metric distance bubble. All birds within this radius get pushed away, regardless of neighbor count. Creates more uniform flock density. 0 = disabled.

Alignment 4.0 Steer toward average heading of neighbors. Dominant force for coherent waves.

Cohesion 3.0 Steer toward average position of neighbors. Keeps flock together.

Front bias 1.0 Weight neighbors in front vs. behind. 1.0 = equal. Higher = follow what's ahead, ignore what's behind. Creates leading-edge instability.

Edge alignment 0.0 Extra alignment for boundary birds. Higher = sharper flock edges.

Max speed 15.0 Maximum flight speed. Higher speed = wider sweeping arcs.

Min speed % 53% Stall speed as a fraction of max speed. Birds are boosted to at least this speed — they can't hover. 0 = birds can stop. 1.0 = all birds fly at exactly max speed.

Max force 0.50 Steering force cap. Low force = gradual turns with inertia. High force = snappy, responsive turns.

Homing 0.75 Isolated-bird centroid pull strength. 0 = no homing, stray clusters stay lost. Higher = stronger pull back to the flock.

None: uniform color. Density: red=crowded, blue=sparse. Velocity: red=braking, green=accelerating, blue=steady.

dV threshold 0.75 Speed change per frame that maps to full red/green in velocity color mode. Lower = more sensitive.

Search radius 5.0 Radius within which neighbors are counted for density coloring.

Sparse count 3 Neighbor count that maps to full blue. Birds with this many or fewer nearby neighbors are sparse.

Dense count 25 Neighbor count that maps to full red. Birds with this many or more nearby neighbors are dense.

Sparse

Dense

A persistent hawk chases the densest part of the flock. Birds within the escape radius scatter with boosted speed, then smoothly blend back to normal flocking.

Hawk speed % 130% Hawk speed relative to boid max speed. 130% = hawk is 30% faster than birds.

Agility 5.0 Hawk turning force. Low = wide sweeping passes. High = tight pursuit.

Escape radius 8 World-unit radius around the hawk that triggers escape behavior. Birds inside this zone panic and flee.

Escape speed % 140% Target escape speed as % of max speed. Higher = faster panic sprints.

Escape accel 2.0 Multiplier on max force during escape. Higher = snappier turns when fleeing.

Blend-back 0.5 Seconds of sim-time to blend from escape back to normal flocking after leaving the escape radius.

Show a faint red wireframe sphere around the hawk indicating the escape trigger zone.

Hawk camera — enable hawk first. Hawk's eye: chase cam behind the hawk. Turning the hawk off returns to Orbit.

Speed braking 0.00 How much birds slow down when neighbors enter their personal space. 0 = off. Higher = stronger braking that cascades through dense flocks, creating density waves.

3,000 birds. Local rules. No choreography.