Oxford Circus 'X' Crossing opens

As mentioned in a previous post about the Oxford Circus intersection getting a revamp, the intersection has finally been opened today after a number of months of the usual British roadworks. A picture of which can be seen below. A video can be found on a BBC news article here



It's interesting to see how a simulation has been transformed into reality, and the benefits it will bring for pedestrians through one of Europe's busiest intersections. I would also guess that the simulation certainly aided the arguments for benefits of having Oxford Circus get a revamp. I'm certain there must be many more examples that exist, where simulations aid urban planners or architects for such applications.

XFlow: Fluid simulation tool

I've just come across XFlow, from NextLimit, which is an accurate fluid simulation tool. It uses a particle based method, instead of a computational grid that are used in other Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools.



The interesting part of this tool is that they have explored other fields, where CFD can be applied to. As they use a particle based method, it is well suited for applying to simulation for complex systems. Examples include:

1. Traffic Simulation
2. Cell Simulation
3. Crowd Simulation

For the crowd simulation application, the particles can represent the pedestrians in different conditions, which can then be applied to scenarios such as emergency evacuation.

Pedestrian model for a Tokyo style intersection of Oxford Circus

As has been recently announced, Oxford circus is to get a pedestrian-friendly revamp. Here is a video of a pedestrian model, first referred to me by Duncan Smith, a PhD student at CASA. The model consists of 5000 people, where a particle-based system was used to run the simulation. These particles were then replaced by animated people.

The model was created by designhive, and a map of the redesign can be seen here.




Here, the pedestrian and traffic simulation models are combined with a 3D Studio Max model of the Oxford Circus proposals, which makes this finished video very realistic.

This is a type of application, where a 3D visualisation of the model can be used to enhance the communication of ideas, and making it more accessible to others.