Understanding the AStar Heatmap

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Karan asked Nov 21, '23 Karan commented Nov 24, '23

Understanding the AStar Heatmap

Hi,

I am trying to understand if there is a way to quantify the colors of the heat map and compare them: like Red = x% of total traversals, Green = y% of total traversal,
The units "% of total traversals" are just an example, they could be changed to something more appropriate as long as the quantitative data remains consistent for comparison.

I looked at Matthew's answer here How are the A* heat map colors calculated? - FlexSim Community but based on the calculation couldn't quite figure how to achieve what I am looking for.

My max heat value is 0.1 and the map is set to Percent of Total Traversals, in my heat map I understand that the Reds are most travelled, and Green/Blues are least travelled.

I also found Joshua's answer here Heat map gradient - FlexSim Community however, I don't think that answers the question of how to translate the colors into numbers.. I see the AStar grid node data but not sure which node translates to what point on the heat map.

Let me know if something is unclear, thank you for your time!

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.2.2

a star navigation heat map

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1700578794134.png (128.1 KiB)

1700578957168.png (531.7 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2023-11-22T07:18:36Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Nov 22, '23 Karan commented Nov 24, '23

Based on Matthew's post, if you set the Max Heat Value to 0.1 and use the Percent of Total Traversals mode, then any node that tracked 0.1% or more of the total traversals will be colored 'solid' red. Below that, the colors gradually shift into each other linearly (0.05% would be yellow for example).

First, the percentage of traversals that belong to a node is calculated (weight). This percentage value is then divided by the Max Heat Value and clamped to the interval between 0 and 1. (So any weight that was larger than 0.1 becomes 1 at this point.

This value is then multiplied by the number of different colors - 1, so we end up with a number between 0 and 4. The whole number value at this determines the base color (0 = blue, 1 = green, 2 = yellow, 3 = orange, 4 = red) and the fractional value determines how far this base color is shifted towards the next color in the progression. 2.5, for example, would thus result in a 50/50 mix between yellow and orange.

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Karan commented · Nov 24, 2023 at 09:36 PM

Thank you for the response, Felix. That makes sense. Knowing that max heat is a percentage and that translates to red allows me to calculate the number of traversals per color as well.

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