官术网_书友最值得收藏!

Dot product

The dot product, sometimes referred to as scalar product or inner product between two vectors, returns a scalar value. It's written as a dot between two vectors, Dot product. The formula for the dot product is defined as follows:

Dot product

The sigma symbol Dot product means sum (add) everything up that follows. The number on top of the sigma is the upper limit; the variable on the bottom is the lower limit. If n and i is 0, the subscripts 0, 1, and 2 are processed. Without using the sigma symbol, the preceding equation would look like this:

Dot product

The resulting scalar represents the directional relation of the vectors. That is, Dot product represents how much Dot product is pointing in the direction of Dot product. Using the dot product we can tell if two vectors are pointing in the same direction or not following these rules:

  • If the dot product is positive, the vectors are pointing in the same direction
  • If the dot product is negative, the vectors point in opposing directions
  • If the dot product is 0, the vectors are perpendicular

How to do it…

Follow these steps to implement the dot product for two and three dimensional vectors:

  1. Add the declaration for the dot product to vectors.h:
    float Dot(const vec2& l, const vec2& r);
    float Dot(const vec3& l, const vec3& r);
  2. Add the implementation for the dot product to vector.cpp:
    float Dot(const vec2& l, const vec2& r) {
       return l.x * r.x + l.y * r.y;
    }
    
    float Dot(const vec3& l, const vec3& r) {
       return l.x * r.x + l.y * r.y + l.z * r.z;
    }

How it works…

Given the formula and the code for the dot product, let's see an example of what we could use it for. Assume we have a spaceship S. We know its forward vector, How it works… and a vector that points to its right, How it works…:

How it works…

We also have an enemy ship E, and a vector that points from our ship S to the enemy ship E, vector How it works…:

How it works…

How can we tell if the the ship S needs to turn left or right to face the enemy ship E?

We need to take the dot product of How it works… and How it works…. If the result of the dot product is positive, the ship needs to turn right. If the result of the dot product is negative, the ship needs to turn to the left. If the result of the dot product is 0, the ship does not need to turn.

There's more…

Our definition of the dot product is fairly abstract. We know that the dot product gives us some information as to the angle between the two vectors, There's more… and There's more…. We can use the dot product to find the exact angle between these two vectors. The key to this is an alternate definition of the dot product.

Geometric definition

Given the vectors Geometric definition and Geometric definition, the geometric definition of the dot product is the length of Geometric definition multiplied by the length of Geometric definition multiplied by the cosine of the angle between them:

Geometric definition

The || operator in the above equation means length and will be covered in the next section. We will cover the geometric definition and other properties of the dot product later in this chapter.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 鄢陵县| 盐亭县| 南皮县| 鄂尔多斯市| 隆尧县| 榆中县| 卢氏县| 石泉县| 克东县| 新蔡县| 林周县| 浮山县| 宜城市| 定陶县| 云林县| 灵石县| 宝山区| 泗水县| 南部县| 赞皇县| 丰城市| 玉林市| 安多县| 揭阳市| 应城市| 北流市| 扶沟县| 淮北市| 慈利县| 通许县| 黎川县| 蒙城县| 集安市| 栖霞市| 繁昌县| 巴楚县| 甘孜县| 泗洪县| 台中市| 宜宾市| 盖州市|