updated boid_flockers to include direction

[sanika-n]

I updated boid_flockers so that the direction of movement of agents is shown in the simulation.
I did this by changing the marker to caret-down (a triangle with a larger base so that the direction of motion is not ambiguous) and then rotating the marker according to the direction of motion of the agent. Here are some images of boid_flockers after this update:

[github-actions]

Performance benchmarks:

Model	Size	Init time [95% CI]	Run time [95% CI]
BoltzmannWealth	small	🔵 +2.8% [+1.6%, +4.0%]	🔵 -0.7% [-0.9%, -0.6%]
BoltzmannWealth	large	🔵 +0.1% [-0.4%, +0.5%]	🔵 -0.3% [-1.3%, +0.6%]
Schelling	small	🔵 +0.2% [+0.0%, +0.4%]	🟢 -4.0% [-4.1%, -3.9%]
Schelling	large	🔵 +0.3% [-0.2%, +0.8%]	🔵 -2.7% [-3.4%, -2.0%]
WolfSheep	small	🔵 +0.2% [-0.1%, +0.5%]	🔵 -0.0% [-0.2%, +0.2%]
WolfSheep	large	🔵 -0.5% [-1.3%, +0.1%]	🔵 +0.3% [-0.6%, +1.4%]
BoidFlockers	small	🔵 +0.8% [+0.3%, +1.3%]	🔵 +0.4% [+0.3%, +0.6%]
BoidFlockers	large	🔵 +0.7% [+0.3%, +1.0%]	🔵 +0.7% [+0.4%, +1.0%]

[EwoutH]

Awesome, this is really useful. Code itself looks good!

Why don't the non-blocking boids have an direction?

Have you any idea on the performance impact?

[Sahil-Chhoker]

Really sorry @EwoutH @sanika-n, as much as I would love to review this PR, my exams got me all tied up for about next 10 days.

[EwoutH]

No worries, it’s all voluntarily. Thanks for communicating your availability clearly, I can pick this one up.

[EwoutH]

@sanika-n a simple initial test is running the old model for 1000 steps and (manually) timing how long it takes, and then doing the same for the updated model. Make sure to use the same seed in both cases.

[sanika-n]

Awesome, this is really useful. Code itself looks good!

Why don't the non-blocking boids have an direction?

Have you any idea on the performance impact?

Just added the direction element to all the boids, and these are the timings that I got after updating the non-flocking boids

Random seed 42

Altered version
1000 steps: 11min 44sec
50 steps: 15.84s
25 steps: 8.18s

Original version
1000 steps: 5min 22s
50 steps: 10.33s
25 steps: 5.42s