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🝰 Heuristics

An inventory of the available heuristics modules.


Heuristics modules are primarily used by Pathfinding nodes, such as Edges Pathfinding and Plot Edges Pathfinding

Heuristics are basically some under-the-hood maths used by ⊚ Search Algorithms to gauge whether one path is better than another. Different algorithms use heuristics differently, but their values is computed consistently.

Heuristic nodes support dynamic weighting – e.g, using a point or edge attribute to modulate their weight based on context. While it’s nice on paper, there is an overhead associated to it, and can deteriorate scoring quality in certain scenarios. They require some trial and error to get nice results.

Modules


🝰 Heuristic Attribute

Attribute-driven heuristics

The Attribute heuristics uses custom point or edge value as raw score.

🝰 Shortest Distance

Favor shortest distance.

The Shortest Distance heuristic node …

🝰 Feedback

Favor uncharted points & edges.

The Feedback heuristic add/remove score value to points & edges that are β€œin use” by other previously computed paths.

🝰 Inertia

Favor active direction preservation.

The Inertia heuristic uses the ongoing traversal data to try and maintain a consistent direction, as if the algorithm had β€œinertia”.

🝰 Steepness

Favor flat trajectories.

The Steepness heuristic uses the edge angle against an up vector to compute a dot product that is used to determine whether the edge should be considered flat or not.

🝰 Azimuth

Favor edges directed toward the goal.

The Azimuth heuristic attempt to force the path to always aim toward the goal.

🝰 Least Nodes

Favor traversing the least amount of nodes.

The Least Nodes heuristic favor node count traversal over anything else.