Overview of pathfinding

At a high level, the pathfinding provides tools and functions to enable smoother and smarter movement behavior for non-avatar entities in Second Life (for example, monsters in a game, rats in a haunted house, wisps in a fantasy forest). We refer to these entities as characters; in gaming terminology, they are sometimes called NPCs (non-player characters) or mobs (mobile objects).

Up till now, content creators had to use resource-intensive scripting work-arounds to emulate intelligent character movement. With the addition of pathfinding, content creators will have a much easier and better performing way of creating characters that can move around in the world. Characters can use LSL functions to avoid obstacles, move around corners, climb inclines, and move across region boundaries, things that are very difficult or even impossible before the implementation of pathfinding. Pathfinding will also enable new gameplay mechanics (such as creating food that attracts monsters in a game).

Note: Pathfinding is not an animation system. It does not provide a way to animate a biped or quadruped in conjunction with the new movement functionality. Existing methods for animating non-player objects will still work the same way as before. Nevertheless, pathfinding enables more dynamic movement and provides a far better system for controlling character movement than was previously possible.