Project 4 Final Final

FlockLA

 I am pleased with the final result. For those familiar with Los Angeles, they could make out locations such as Downtown, The Valley, and where the oceans and mountains must be.

After the last class, it was clear that I need to make my project a real time animation rather than a still print. I also changed the attraction force and flocking forces to get a more appropriate "wandering" motion from the particles, rather than orbiting.

I wanted the piece to be reminiscent of how cities look at night viewed from a plan, which informed my color choices. I also plotted the intersections themselves and scaled them by their traffic flow.


More animation progression (1st run through):

Project 4 Final Progress

I finally decided where I want to go with this project. After sitting in traffic for over almost an hour, I thought about ways I could visualize traffic in an artistic way. After some looking, I found traffic data for Los Angeles, a notorious location for traffic, and I was all too familiar with the traffic situation after living there for 4 years. The data contains the average number of cars passing through a random sample of intersections across LA. I want to plot the intersections according the latitude and longitude and then use the traffic flow through the intersection as the mass in order to attract the particles and have them flock to the intersections.

The most difficult step will be parsing the data, because the latitude and longitude of the intersections is not easily attainable. They are very easy to get using the Google Maps API, but the restrictions on the use of the API make it unusable for my purposes. Therefore I have to use Open Street Maps, which does not provide an easy way to get the latitude and longitude for a cross street. I am working on parsing the Open Street Maps data for a specified region of LA, so that I can get the latitude and longitude of an intersection.

For now, here is an update plotting random intersections as white dots with random attraction magnitudes.