O'Hara, Noel2015-02-162015-02-1620021467-8659https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8659.00630The availability of powerful and affordable 3D PC graphics boards has made the rendering of rich immersiveenvironments possible at interactive speeds. The scene update rate and the appropriate behaviour of objects withinthe world are central to this immersive feeling. This paper is concerned with the behaviour computations involvedin the flocking algorithm, which has been used extensively to emulate the flocking behaviour of creatures found innature. The main contribution of this paper is a new method for hierarchically combining portions of the flocksinto groups to reduce the cost of the behavioural computation, allowing far larger flocks to be updated in real-timein the world.ACM CSS: I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism-Animation10.1111/1467-8659.00630723-731