pathing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of planning or assigning the route that something or someone will follow.

   Like a navigation app deciding which streets will get you there fastest.

   Careful pathing through the warehouse reduced the time workers spent walking between shelves.

   The race organizers reviewed the pathing for each runner to avoid bottlenecks.

   Similarrouting

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process of working out a route between two points, especially one computed by software for a character or robot to follow.

   Like a GPS choosing the shortest drive while steering you clear of road closures.

   The studio rewrote its pathing so units would stop clumping at narrow bridges.

   Smooth pathing lets the characters weave through a crowded market without colliding.

   Similarpathfinding

   Note

   Outside software, the word follows routes that compete for limited room. RAIL wrote in 2019 of the pathing of freight trains in and out of Southampton Port, where bigger ships were straining the schedule. Ronald R. Sims's Managing Organizational Behavior (2002) pairs career pathing with career planning to describe mapping an employee's way forward. In both cases the route is worked out for someone or something else to travel.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of path.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that works both with and without an object. With an object it means making a way in, on or for something, as when a crew clears rubble. Without one it covers navigating a directory tree to a file, or simply pathfinding, so a program can just be pathing. As a gerund it blurs into the route-finding noun, and only context tells them apart.

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