author-name: eatjason
message-date: 2011-04-10 12:00:23 UTC
I was working with this equation: angle of 2 relative to 1= atan2(v2.y,v2.x) - atan2(v1.y,v1.x) To find a signed angle between two vectors. I have found that it DOES NOT yieldthe relative angle between two vectors in every case. Lets say you are trying to find the angle between a vector v2 and vector v1, relative to v1. Let v1 = ( -sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2 ) and v2 = ( -sqrt(2)/2, sqrt(2)/2 ). By observation you can see that the relative angle should be -pi/2 (if you imagine v1 as the unit-x vector). However: (for v1) atan2( -sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2) ) = -3pi / 4 (for v2) atan2( sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2) ) = 3pi / 4 and ( 3pi / 4 ) - ( -3pi / 4 ) = 6pi / 4 = 3pi / 2 which is the angle, but its supposed to be between pi and -pi, so -pi / 2 What I did to solve this problem is I first found atan2(v1.y,v1.x), then rotated v2 by the negative that value, then found atan2 of the components of that new rotated vector (which is basically manually rotating v2 to be relative to v1, as the x-unit vector)
author-name: martinbaker
message-date: 2011-04-10 15:13:40 UTC
Yes, I guess the issue is that if we are facing in direction 1 and we want to rotate to face in direction 2 we could rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise. So a rotation of pi/2 in the clockwise direction is the same as in the anti-clockwise direction 3pi/4. Perhaps the web page should have two equations? One case if we always want to rotate in a clockwise direction and another equation if we want to rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on which is the smaller angle? Martin
author-name: eatjason
message-date: 2011-04-10 18:39:08 UTC
I'm afraid it might be a little more complicated than that. The issue is that the equation as it is yields a clockwise or anti-clockwise angle depending on where the vectors happen to be. Here's another case, getting the angle between v1 and v2 relative to v1: v1 = ( sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2 ) v2 = ( -sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2 ) now by observation, you can see that the anti-clockwise rotation should be 3pi/4, which it is (same as the first example). now I might have my atan2 wrong, but my understanding is this: (for v1) atan2( -sqrt(2)/2, sqrt(2)/2) ) = -pi / 4 (for v2) atan2( -sqrt(2)/2, -sqrt(2)/2) ) = -3pi / 4 now the difference will look like this: ( -3pi / 4 ) - ( -pi / 4 ) = -2pi / 4 = -pi / 2 what you have here is the clockwise angle relative to v1! So that means that the equation atan2(v2.y,v2.x) - atan2(v1.y,v1.x) can yield clockwise or anti-clockwise, based on the orientation of the two vectors (even if the relative orientation stays the same). Which is a problem, because generally when you want a relative orientation, you don't so much care how the whole system is oriented.
author-name: martinbaker
message-date: 2011-04-11 15:33:29 UTC
This is a useful topic so I have added a new page to discuss it here: https://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/algebra/vectors/angleBetween/issues/ Is the page correct? and am I still missing the point you are making? Would it be alright with you if I put a link from that page to this thread as I don't want to take the credit for the points arising from your message. Martin
author-name: eatjason
message-date: 2011-04-11 19:43:07 UTC
I think that clears things up actually. If atan2 is between pi and -pi, obviously a difference can be between 2pi and -2pi. That didn't occur to me... This problem comes up quite a bit in game design, you have some vehicle that needs to turn in the direction of some other object, but it can't do it instantly, so you want to find which way it needs to turn. My vehicle was working fine when facing right, but when it tried to chase something to the left, it started doing funny things. So I guess the solution is to see if its bigger or smaller than pi or -pi, and just transform it then. I was trying to solve this problem without any if statements, maybe two if statements will be faster than having to do 2 sins and coses to perform the rotation i was doing. Go ahead and link it, that was a useful description of the problem. (I guess I didn't need to use all those square roots to describe it :) ) Jason
