7 points
Ever since I went down a particularly nasty rabbit hole and came out with a tenuous grasp on quaternions, imaginary numbers started feeling very simple, familiar and logical.
2 points
Yeah. The thing that made me “get” quaternions was thinking about clocks. The hands move around in a 2d plane. You can represent the tips position with just x,y. However the axis that they rotate around is the z axis.
To do a n dimensional rotation you need a n+1 dimensional axis. So to do a 3D rotation you need a 4D axis. This is bassicly a quat.
You can use trig to get there in parts but it requires you to be careful to keep your planes distinct. If your planes get parallel you get gimbal lock. This never happens when working with quats.
2 points
