Ok,
I am more a developper than a mathematician, but I agree that you can't throw away
mathematics from 3D stuff.
And as far as I know, radians are more often used than degrees. But currently I'm
working on a sort of flight simulator for
military use, and every coordinates are in degrees/second/milliseconds.
So, as you said Arne: "Converting to/from radians is a multiplication away, not a
problem", so use the one is the best for you.
I swap between both and everything's fine. It's a matter of habit I suppose.
David.
Arne Halvorsen wrote:
> Radians are not going anywhere from this api or any other.
>
> I do think it is fair to represent angles in degrees to the user, even people
> who is comfortable with radians would tell somebody (the user) to rotate the
> object 60 degrees, using a field of view of 45 degrees and so on.
>
> Converting to/from radians is a multiplication away, not a problem (unless you
> would like to convert to/from minutes and seconds, slightly more work).
>
> Julian wrote:
>
> > Hugh,
> >
> > >> Radians may have nice mathematical properties, but these are
> > >> only of interest to ... mathematicians. New programmers,
> > >> experienced programmers, 3D artists, architects, geographers,
> > >> etc all think in degrees.
> >
> > any 3D programming is about math! if you try to keep the math out of your
> > program, you will end up playing with a building kit. you will always have
> > to depend on the functionality shipped with your 3D API, and never will you
> > be able to extend the predefined objects and behaviours by your own.
> >
> > new programmers and geographers might think in degrees, but experienced
> > programmers don't, and the newbies would do well trying to understand how a
> > circle works and how radians relate to it.
> >
> > why keep the math away from your students? only if they understand how the
> > scene is rendered (in mathematical terms), how the various elements of a 3D
> > application work (like projection, lighting, collision, picking, shadows
> > etc), they can get the most out of it.
> >
> > understanding what's going on behind the scenes is crucial for any
> > programming, IMHO. certainly you can get by just calling the methods, but
> > that way you remain slave to the API.
> >
> > if you don't even want your students to get involved with basic math like
> > radians, you should teach them how to use Bryce, not how to work with
> > Java3D.
> >
> > -- julian
> >
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