3 ms·
It's correct that you can look in any direction with only two planes, but that's not enough; you need to be able to control your orientation around that final a
by jblow 10y ago
It's correct that you can look in any direction with only two planes, but that's not enough; you need to be able to control your orientation around that final axis. You need 3 planes for that (3 "rotational degrees of freedom"). The idea that a quaternion is somehow two complex numbers is wrong.
- uryga 10y agoThanks. I did some research and found out that, indeed, my vague understanding of quaternions was wrong. I remember skimming the Wikipedia article and seeing this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion#Quaternions_as_pairs_of_complex_numbers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion#Quaternions_as_pa... I then assumed that my idea with two rotations is how quaternions work. Here's to actually reading about a concept before I start explaining it next time...
- chombier 10y agoI think you can do that using two rotation axis only (cf. proper Euler angles). And quaternions are made of two complex numbers. edit: typo.
- Kristine1975 10y ago>And quaternions are made of two complex numbers. I don't pretend to grok quaternions (I only use them), but I'm fairly sure a quaternion consists of three imaginary numbers plus a real number.