Quaternions or Vector Math

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0 comments, last by Zakwayda 14 years ago
Hello, I'm creating a class that controls a planes movement where depending on the planes position and angle the plane will rotate and simulate realistic plane movement. I've been designing on how to construct a class for the program and I was planning on using vector math for creating the plane's movement but someone told me that Quaternion’s is a better option. What would be the best option and why? Thanks for helping!!!
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If you're new to 3-d math, I'd recommend sticking to vector math and/or matrices and not worrying about quaternions for now. Quaternions have some nice characteristics, but anything you can do with a quaternion you can pretty much do with a matrix (or just a set of three orthonormal vectors), so there's really no 'need', per se, to use quaternions for this.

As for vectors and matrices, although this can be easily done by storing and manipulating a set of three basis vectors (e.g. side, up, and forward), it's a bit more convenient (and is functionally equivalent) to use a matrix. Given a 3x3 rotation matrix and a position vector, you can control and maneuver the plane in pretty much any way you can think of.

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