Social Distance Improvements in Pathfinder 2020.3

Pathfinder 2020.3 further enhances the user's ability to model social distance behavior as a method to address pandemic safety. Social Distance has been completely separated from Comfort Distance. Now, rather than Enable Forced Separation in the Simulation Parameters (retained in 2020.3 for legacy files), Social Distancing has its own selection field in the Advanced tab of the Edit Profiles dialog. With this recent development, occupants exhibit less "jostle" or "jitter" while smoothly and effectively maintaining distance.

Previously "comfort distance" has been renamed to Personal Distance to further distinguish its use from Social Distance in Pathfinder. Personal Distance is a tool which can be used to modify regional or demographic preferences when queuing and is not strictly enforced. Personal Distance is measured from the outer radius of one occupant to another (shoulder-to-shoulder) while Social Distance is measured center-to-center.

A new social distance feature in Pathfinder 2020.3 is the ability to use Movement Groups. Users now have two options to choose for group behavior. The group can maintain social distance among themselves (and others) while following, or they can ignore social distance among themselves.

Social Distance can now be set as a constant value or other distribution, similar to other Profile parameters. More information on both Social Distance and Personal Distance can be found in section 5.1.5 Advanced Tab of the Pathfinder 2020.3 User Manual, or you can read our initial preview announcement.