Sumo vs. Ninja

Steering Behaviors is interesting method to create life-like behaviors for agents. It is tempting to use it for local avoidance. It is simple and intuitive to understand, but it comes with one really fatal drawback. When it breaks–and it will–it is eventually impossible to tune to get the desired behavior.

Velocity based collision avoidance methods on the other hand are a bit harder to get up and running, but get past the point where steering behavior based local avoidance fails. They sure come with their own share of problems too, like all sorts of jittering and feedback effects. But those problems are manageable and tunable to greater depth than anything based steering behaviors.

One way to look at describe the difference between these two methods is that steering behaviors based avoidance is basically a sumo-suit your character wears. As you bump into something, you are gradually pushed away. But when things get tight, you get stuck, and just tumble around.

One the other hand you want your characters to be suave like ninja, slipping through even the tightest of all encounters.

Eventually you want the agents to be as forward looking as an octopus, so that they can plan their avoidance velocities even better.