A Quick and Clear Look at Grid-Based Visibility

In my previous article, <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/a-short-and-direct-walk-with-pascals-triangle-26a86d76f75f" rel="noopener" target="_blank">A Short and Direct Walk with Pascal’s Triangle</a>, I explain how grid-based pathfinding can be improved to yield highly direct walking paths without using line-of-sight tests. This follow-up article will show you a related technique called grid-based visibility, which computes visible regions without line-of-sight tests. Grid-based visibility is virtually unheard of in the computer science community, but it’s a practical method that makes sense for a variety of artificial intelligence applications. It’s also extremely easy to implement, requiring as few as 3 lines of code. Read on to discover your simplest option for solving visibility problems in video games, mobile robotics, or architectural design. <h1>The Visible Region Problem</h1> Similar to pathfinding, visibility analysis arises in a number of fields involving artificial intelligence and spatial environments. A video game developer may want to compute the region of a game map that is visible from an enemy watch tower. A mobile robotics engineer may need to compute a robot’s field of view in a simulation that tests the robot’s control system. An architect may want to analyze people’s views at various locations in a building or along a street. Visibility analysis can also be used to approximate the area illuminated by a source of light. The basic problem is this: Given a 2D top-down map, compute the region of space that is visible from a point. <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/a-quick-and-clear-look-at-grid-based-visibility-bf63769fbc78">Click Here</a>