Navigation and Pathfinding for Defence Simulation
Intelligent movement across worlds of any size
FEATURES
Navigation and Pathfinding Middleware for Training Simulation
In large-scale virtual environments, entities are only convincing if they can find their way through cluttered terrain, around obstacles, across multi-level structures, and over distances that can run to hundreds of kilometres. That applies whether you are moving individual soldiers, tanks, or other vehicles manoeuvring on the ground. This is usually where navigation systems built in-house start to struggle, because handling that scale well is hard. Kythera is built for it. It is engine-agnostic C++ middleware, so it fits into your existing engine and tech stack rather than replacing them. It generates navigation data automatically, routes units across large, partially loaded environments in real time, and keeps that movement sensible as the world around them changes.
01
Automatic Navigation Mesh generation
Kythera generates high-quality Navigation Meshes (nav meshes) for your environment automatically, and regenerates them while the simulation runs. If terrain is altered or a structure is damaged, the affected mesh updates to match, so entities plan routes against the current state of the world rather than the version loaded at startup. That takes a large amount of manual setup off your team.
02
Hierarchical pathfinding at scale
For simulations spanning hundreds of kilometres, Kythera's hierarchical pathfinding returns routes across massive, partially loaded environments in fractions of a second. It plans the broad route first and fills in detail only where the entity needs it, instead of evaluating the whole world at full resolution. This lets entire units and armies move coherently over long distances at a processing cost low enough to be practical, and it works even when parts of the environment aren't loaded into memory.
03
Traversing obstacles and multi-level structures
Navigation links let entities move through and over obstacles and navigate multi-level structures such as buildings, bridges, and complex infrastructure. Kythera can generate these links automatically, or you can place them by hand where you need precise control. Movement is no longer limited to open ground, so entities can use interior spaces and move between levels.
04
Terrain and environment analysis
Kythera captures surface properties automatically while it generates the Nav Mesh, so entities can follow roads, avoid hazardous terrain, and respond to ground conditions without extra work from your engineers. The navigation pipeline is also extensible: customers are already using it to encode information such as wading depth and to set movement constraints for particular unit types, from infantry to heavy vehicles such as tanks.
05
Real-time obstacle avoidance in crowded, changing worlds
Entities detect obstacles and changes around them as they happen and re-route in real time, rather than following a path that is no longer clear. When a route is blocked, terrain shifts, or a new hazard appears, they adjust while moving. Where large numbers of entities share a space, they steer around one another as well as around static objects, so crowds and columns keep moving instead of colliding or stalling.
06
Perception-aware, tactical avoidance
Kythera's avoidance can be made perception-aware, so an entity only avoids what it can actually perceive rather than everything present in the scene. An entity won't react to a threat it has no way of detecting, which keeps its behaviour believable and makes room for tactics that turn on what each side can and cannot see.
WHY IT MATTERS
What this means for your simulation
Environments are quicker to set up, because the navigation data is generated rather than placed by hand. Entities keep moving sensibly as their numbers grow and the world changes around them. You get all of that without building and maintaining a navigation system of your own, which would otherwise take years of engineering.
GET IN TOUCH
Talk to us about your simulation needs
Interested in using our tools? We'd love to hear from you.
Please use the form to send us some information on your company. We'll get back to you and invite you to book a call with us to discuss your needs and start the evaluation process.
For more general enquiries, you can email us on contact@intelligentartefacts.com.