On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Michael Litchard
Star Wars MUD has a 3-D coordinate system such that (0,0,0) is some planet. I'm curious as to how one might model this system that could simulate a ship's movement through a 3-D grid. Matrix, 3-D array, graph. None of these? Ideas?
The octtree suggestions are good for if you need to keep track of nearest-neighbors information. If you're going to be keeping track of orientation as well as position, note that that means you have six dimensions (three for location; and three for orientation). Moreover, for the orientation I'd suggest using quaternions instead of Euler angles (aka: roll, pitch, yaw). Euler angles have a number of problems including non-uniqueness of representation and loosing degrees of freedom due to gimbal lock[1]— whereas quaternions avoid those problems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock#Gimbal_lock_in_applied_mathematics -- Live well, ~wren