Jochen, maybe this could work, but I think, it would be overkill. All in all this will never be a serious competitor for a real crowd simulation like Massive for example, although I really like the result. I have seen crowd simulations that looked way more unnatural.
But I guess in the film business, they would always rely on dedicated softwares. Our solution is much too limited.
Michael, I'm not sure if Matt didn't know that we can animate a population like that. Anyway I'd like to hear Matt chiming in, to see if there are plans for improving this thing. A sophisticated particle system for example would be fantastic. Or improving the population feature to make things like a better crowd simulation possible.
OK, here is another test. I created a more neutral texture map for the guy, and used separate texture maps (image map shaders plus transform shaders with World Space checked, that are animated to move exactly like the populations) like the one below to add some variation for the clothing.
The head is still the same, but I'm working on it...