RigidBody2D projectile to target calculation - vector

I am using this code to shoot a projectile in order to hit a target on the ground.
I am applying an impulse force in the x direction, which is calculated from its height above the target. I am working out the force to add by dividing the x distance by the time it will take to fall due to gravity, but this does not seem to work:
float xDist = flag.position.x - transform.position.x;
float yDist = transform.position.y - flag.position.y;
float smallY = (4/9.81f) + (0.5f*-9.81f*Mathf.Pow((4/9.81f), 2));
yDist = yDist + smallY;
float yImpactForce = Mathf.Sqrt(2*9.81f*yDist);
float xForce = xDist/(Mathf.Sqrt(2*yDist/9.81f));
Can anyone help me?
Not sure if my calculations are wrong, or whether the physics is rather different than a real life situation. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks
EDITS: The smallY variable is used to find the distance to the peak of the projectile's trajectory

From memory
dist = (a * t2)/2
so solving for time gives:
t = sqrt(2 * dist/a)
Therefore, your initial velocity calculation should be:
float fallTime = Mathf.Sqrt(2*yDist/9.81f);
float xVel = xDist/fallTime;
At least that's in the real world.
Since you are just trying to impact a specific velocity, it would be easier to just use ForceMode.VelocityChange.
To account for the y velocity in the updated version of the question, the additional time will be, assuming a positive (upwards) y-component (from v = a * t or t = v/a, times 2 -- once for decelerating to zero and once for accelerating back to the starting velocity and height, but in the other direction):
float fallTime = Mathf.Sqrt(2*yDist/9.81f);
var yTime = 2 * (yVel / 9.81f);
falltime += yTime;
float xVel = xDist/fallTime;

Related

How to calculate azimuth from X Y Z values from magnetometer?

I want to make compass with Arduino and QMC5883. Now, the magnetometer outputs me only X Y Z values, and I have to calculate the rest myself. So far, I've used this:
float azimuth = atan2(x, y) * 180.0/PI;
But it's pretty buggy, and vulnerable to tilting in any direction. Is there any better algorythm that - for example - phone manufactures use? I could use accelerometer for help, if it would be needed.
The BBC micro:bit's device abstraction layer (DAL) includes this code to do tilt adjustment based on angles derived from accelerometer data. From https://github.com/lancaster-university/microbit-dal/blob/master/source/drivers/MicroBitCompass.cpp
/**
* Calculates a tilt compensated bearing of the device, using the accelerometer.
*/
int MicroBitCompass::tiltCompensatedBearing()
{
// Precompute the tilt compensation parameters to improve readability.
float phi = accelerometer->getRollRadians();
float theta = accelerometer->getPitchRadians();
// Convert to floating point to reduce rounding errors
Sample3D cs = this->getSample(NORTH_EAST_DOWN);
float x = (float) cs.x;
float y = (float) cs.y;
float z = (float) cs.z;
// Precompute cos and sin of pitch and roll angles to make the calculation a little more efficient.
float sinPhi = sin(phi);
float cosPhi = cos(phi);
float sinTheta = sin(theta);
float cosTheta = cos(theta);
// Calculate the tilt compensated bearing, and convert to degrees.
float bearing = (360*atan2(x*cosTheta + y*sinTheta*sinPhi + z*sinTheta*cosPhi, z*sinPhi - y*cosPhi)) / (2*PI);
// Handle the 90 degree offset caused by the NORTH_EAST_DOWN based calculation.
bearing = 90 - bearing;
// Ensure the calculated bearing is in the 0..359 degree range.
if (bearing < 0)
bearing += 360.0f;
return (int) (bearing);
}

Turn rate on a player's rotation doing a 360 once it hits pi

Making a game using Golang since it seems to work quite well for games. I made the player face the mouse always, but wanted a turn rate to make certain characters turn slower than others. Here is how it calculates the turn circle:
func (p *player) handleTurn(win pixelgl.Window, dt float64) {
mouseRad := math.Atan2(p.pos.Y-win.MousePosition().Y, win.MousePosition().X-p.pos.X) // the angle the player needs to turn to face the mouse
if mouseRad > p.rotateRad-(p.turnSpeed*dt) {
p.rotateRad += p.turnSpeed * dt
} else if mouseRad < p.rotateRad+(p.turnSpeed*dt) {
p.rotateRad -= p.turnSpeed * dt
}
}
The mouseRad being the radians for the turn to face the mouse, and I'm just adding the turn rate [in this case, 2].
What's happening is when the mouse reaches the left side and crosses the center y axis, the radian angle goes from -pi to pi or vice-versa. This causes the player to do a full 360.
What is a proper way to fix this? I've tried making the angle an absolute value and it only made it occur at pi and 0 [left and right side of the square at the center y axis].
I have attached a gif of the problem to give better visualization.
Basic summarization:
Player slowly rotates to follow mouse, but when the angle reaches pi, it changes polarity which causes the player to do a 360 [counts all the back to the opposite polarity angle].
Edit:
dt is delta time, just for proper frame-decoupled changes in movement obviously
p.rotateRad starts at 0 and is a float64.
Github repo temporarily: here
You need this library to build it! [go get it]
Note beforehand: I downloaded your example repo and applied my change on it, and it worked flawlessly. Here's a recording of it:
(for reference, GIF recorded with byzanz)
An easy and simple solution would be to not compare the angles (mouseRad and the changed p.rotateRad), but rather calculate and "normalize" the difference so it's in the range of -Pi..Pi. And then you can decide which way to turn based on the sign of the difference (negative or positive).
"Normalizing" an angle can be achieved by adding / subtracting 2*Pi until it falls in the -Pi..Pi range. Adding / subtracting 2*Pi won't change the angle, as 2*Pi is exactly a full circle.
This is a simple normalizer function:
func normalize(x float64) float64 {
for ; x < -math.Pi; x += 2 * math.Pi {
}
for ; x > math.Pi; x -= 2 * math.Pi {
}
return x
}
And use it in your handleTurn() like this:
func (p *player) handleTurn(win pixelglWindow, dt float64) {
// the angle the player needs to turn to face the mouse:
mouseRad := math.Atan2(p.pos.Y-win.MousePosition().Y,
win.MousePosition().X-p.pos.X)
if normalize(mouseRad-p.rotateRad-(p.turnSpeed*dt)) > 0 {
p.rotateRad += p.turnSpeed * dt
} else if normalize(mouseRad-p.rotateRad+(p.turnSpeed*dt)) < 0 {
p.rotateRad -= p.turnSpeed * dt
}
}
You can play with it in this working Go Playground demo.
Note that if you store your angles normalized (being in the range -Pi..Pi), the loops in the normalize() function will have at most 1 iteration, so that's gonna be really fast. Obviously you don't want to store angles like 100*Pi + 0.1 as that is identical to 0.1. normalize() would produce correct result with both of these input angles, while the loops in case of the former would have 50 iterations, in the case of the latter would have 0 iterations.
Also note that normalize() could be optimized for "big" angles by using floating operations analogue to integer division and remainder, but if you stick to normalized or "small" angles, this version is actually faster.
Preface: this answer assumes some knowledge of linear algebra, trigonometry, and rotations/transformations.
Your problem stems from the usage of rotation angles. Due to the discontinuous nature of the inverse trigonometric functions, it is quite difficult (if not outright impossible) to eliminate "jumps" in the value of the functions for relatively close inputs. Specifically, when x < 0, atan2(+0, x) = +pi (where +0 is a positive number very close to zero), but atan2(-0, x) = -pi. This is exactly why you experience the difference of 2 * pi which causes your problem.
Because of this, it is often better to work directly with vectors, rotation matrices and/or quaternions. They use angles as arguments to trigonometric functions, which are continuous and eliminate any discontinuities. In our case, spherical linear interpolation (slerp) should do the trick.
Since your code measures the angle formed by the relative position of the mouse to the absolute rotation of the object, our goal boils down to rotating the object such that the local axis (1, 0) (= (cos rotateRad, sin rotateRad) in world space) points towards the mouse. In effect, we have to rotate the object such that (cos p.rotateRad, sin p.rotateRad) equals (win.MousePosition().Y - p.pos.Y, win.MousePosition().X - p.pos.X).normalized.
How does slerp come into play here? Considering the above statement, we simply have to slerp geometrically from (cos p.rotateRad, sin p.rotateRad) (represented by current) to (win.MousePosition().Y - p.pos.Y, win.MousePosition().X - p.pos.X).normalized (represented by target) by an appropriate parameter which will be determined by the rotation speed.
Now that we have laid out the groundwork, we can move on to actually calculating the new rotation. According to the slerp formula,
slerp(p0, p1; t) = p0 * sin(A * (1-t)) / sin A + p1 * sin (A * t) / sin A
Where A is the angle between unit vectors p0 and p1, or cos A = dot(p0, p1).
In our case, p0 == current and p1 == target. The only thing that remains is the calculation of the parameter t, which can also be considered as the fraction of the angle to slerp through. Since we know that we are going to rotate by an angle p.turnSpeed * dt at every time step, t = p.turnSpeed * dt / A. After substituting the value of t, our slerp formula becomes
p0 * sin(A - p.turnSpeed * dt) / sin A + p1 * sin (p.turnSpeed * dt) / sin A
To avoid having to calculate A using acos, we can use the compound angle formula for sin to simplify this further. Note that the result of the slerp operation is stored in result.
result = p0 * (cos(p.turnSpeed * dt) - sin(p.turnSpeed * dt) * cos A / sin A) + p1 * sin(p.turnSpeed * dt) / sin A
We now have everything we need to calculate result. As noted before, cos A = dot(p0, p1). Similarly, sin A = abs(cross(p0, p1)), where cross(a, b) = a.X * b.Y - a.Y * b.X.
Now comes the problem of actually finding the rotation from result. Note that result = (cos newRotation, sin newRotation). There are two possibilities:
Directly calculate rotateRad by p.rotateRad = atan2(result.Y, result.X), or
If you have access to the 2D rotation matrix, simply replace the rotation matrix with the matrix
|result.X -result.Y|
|result.Y result.X|

Giving a direction to a moving object

I wish to create a tower defense game in SDL. Before starting the project, I experiment everything I will need to do when programming the game. In the test I am doing currently, there are a tower (static object), targets (moving objects) that are in its range, and shoots (moving objects) that are fired from the turret to the targets. What I fail to do is find a way to give the 'shoot' objects a direction. By shoot object, I mean the object that is fired by the tower when targets are in range. Also, whatever the direction is, the shoot shall always have the same speed, which forbids the use of the formula dirx = x2 - x1.
Shoots are structures defined as the following:
typedef struct shoot
{
SDL_Surface *img; // Visual representation of the shoot object.
SDL_Rect pos; // Position of the object, it's a structure containing
// coordinates x and y (these are of type int).
int index;
float dirx; // dirx and diry are the movement done by the shoots object in
// 1 frame, so that for each frame, the object shoot is moved dirx
// pixels on the axis x and diry pixels on the axis y
float diry; // (the program deals with the fact that the movement will be done
// with integers and not with floats, that is no problem to me)
float posx; // posx and posy are the real, precise coordinates of the shoot
float posy;
struct shoot *prev;
struct shoot *next;
} shoot;
What I need is a way to calculate the position of the object shoot in the next frame, given its position and direction in the current frame.
This is the best I could find (please note that it is a paper written formula, so the names are simplified, different from the names in the code):
dirx = d * ((p2x - p1x) / ((p2x - p1x) + (p2y - p1y)))
diry = d * ((p2y - p1y) / ((p2x - p1x) + (p2y - p1y)))
dirx and diry correspond to the movement done, in the pixel, by the shoot on the axis x and y, in one frame.
d is a multiplier and the big parenthesis (all of what is not d) is a coefficient.
p2 is the point the shoot shall aim for (the center of the target aimed for). p1 is the current position of the shoot object. x or y means that we use the coordinate x or y of the point.
The problem with this formula is that it gives me an unexact value. For example, aiming in diagonal will make the shoot slower that aiming straight north. Moreover, it doesn't go in the right direction, and I can't find why since my paper tests show me I'm right...
I would love some help here to find a formula that makes the shoot move correctly.
If p1 is the source of a shoot object, p2 is the destination, and s is the speed you want to move it at (units per frame or per second - latter is better), then the velocity of the object is given by
float dx = p2.x - p1.x, dy = p2.y - p1.y,
inv = s / sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy);
velx = inv * dx; vely = inv * dy;
(You should probably change dir to vel as it is a more sensible variable name)
Your attempt seems to be normalizing the direction vector by Manhattan distance, which is wrong - you must normalize by the Euclidean distance, which is given by the sqrt term.

How to calculate the angles of the projection in 3d for an object to step at given point?

I need to calculate the angles to through the ball in that direction for a given speed and the point where it should land after thrown.
The horizontal angle is easy(We know both start and step points).How to calculate the vertical angle of projection.There is gravy applying on object.
Time of travel will be usual as bowling time(time between ball release and occurring step) as per video.
Is there a way directly in unity3d?
Watch this video for 8 seconds for clear understating of this question.
According to the Wikipedia page Trajectory of a projectile, the "Angle of reach" (The angle you want to know) is calculated as follows:
θ = 1/2 * arcsin(gd/v²)
In this formula, g is the gravitational constant 9.81, d is the distance you want the projectile to travel, and v is the velocity at which the object is thrown.
Code to calculate this could look something like this:
float ThrowAngle(Vector3 destination, float velocity)
{
const float g = 9.81f;
float distance = Vector3.Distance(transform.position, destination);
//assuming you want degrees, otherwise just drop the Rad2Deg.
return Mathf.Rad2Deg * (0.5f * Asin((g*distance)/Mathf.Pow(velocity, 2f)));
}
This will give you the angle assuming no air resistance etc. exist in your game.
If your destination and your "throwing point" are not at the same height, you may want to set both to y=0 first, otherwise, errors may occur.
EDIT:
Considering that your launch point is higher up than the destination, this formula from the same page should work:
θ = arctan(v² (+/-) √(v^4-g(gx² + 2yv²))/gx)
Here, x is the range, or distance, and y is the altitude (relative to the launch point).
Code:
float ThrowAngle(Vector3 start, Vector3 destination, float v)
{
const float g = 9.81f;
float xzd = Mathf.Sqrt(Mathf.Pow(destination.x - start.x, 2) + Mathf.Pow(destination.z - start.z, 2));
float yd = destination.y - start.y;
//assuming you want degrees, otherwise just drop the Rad2Deg. Split into two lines for better readability.
float sqrt = (Mathf.Pow(v,4) - g * (g*Mathf.Pow(xzd,2) + 2*yd*Mathf.Pow(v,2))/g*xzd);
//you could also implement a solution which uses both values in some way, but I left that out for simplicity.
return Mathf.Atan(Mathf.Pow(v, 2) + sqrt);
}

Vector deltas and moving in unknown areas

I was in need of a little math help that I can't seem to find the answer to, any links to documentation would be greatly appreciated.
Heres my situation, I have no idea where I am in this maze, but I need to move around and find my way back to the start. I was thinking of implementing a waypoint list of places i've been offset from my start at 0,0. This is a 2D cartesian plane.
I've been given 2 properties, my translation speed from 0-1 and my rotation speed from -1 to 1. -1 is very left and +1 is very right. These are speed and not angles so thats where my problem lies. If I'm given 0 as a translation speed and 0.2 I will continually turn to my right at a slow speed.
How do I figure out the offsets given these 2 variables? I can store it every time I take a 'step'.
I just need to figure out the offsets in x and y terms given the translations and rotation speeds. And the rotation to get to those points.
Any help is appreciated.
Your question is unclear on a couple of points, so I have to make some assumptions:
During each time interval, translation speed and rotational velocity are constant.
You know the values of these variables in every time interval (and you know rotational velocity in usable units, like radians per second, not just "very left").
You know initial heading.
You can maintain enough precision that roundoff error is not a problem.
Given that, there is an exact solution. First the easy part:
delta_angle = omega * delta_t
Where omega is the angular velocity. The distance traveled (maybe along a curve) is
dist = speed * delta_t
and the radius of the curve is
radius = dist / delta_angle
(This gets huge when angular velocity is near zero-- we'll deal with that in a moment.) If angle (at the beginning of the interval) is zero, defined as pointing in the +x direction, then the translation in the interval is easy, and we'll call it deta_x_0 and delta_y_0:
delta_x_0 = radius * sin(delta_angle)
delta_y_0 = radius * (1 - cos(delta_angle))
Since we want to be able to deal with very small delta_angle and very large radius, we'll expand sin and cos, and use this only when angular velocity is close to zero:
dx0 = r * sin(da) = (dist/da) * [ da - da^3/3! + da^5/5! - ...]
= dist * [ 1 - da^2/3! + da^4/5! - ...]
dy0 = r * (1-cos(da)) = (dist/da) * [ da^2/2! - da^4/4! + da^6/6! - ...]
= dist * [ da/2! - da^3/4! + da^5/6! - ...]
But angle generally isn't equal to zero, so we have to rotate these displacements:
dx = cos(angle) * dx0 - sin(angle) * dy0
dy = sin(angle) * dx0 - cos(angle) * dy0
You could do it in two stages. First work out the change of direction to get a new direction vector and then secondly work out the new position using this new direction. Something like
angle = angle + omega * delta_t;
const double d_x = cos( angle );
const double d_y = sin( angle );
x = x + d_x * delta_t * v;
y = y + d_y * delta_t * v;
where you store your current angle out at each step. ( d_x, d_y ) is the current direction vector and omega is the rotation speed that you have. delta_t is obviously your timestep and v is your speed.
This may be too naive to split it up into two distinct stages. I'm not sure I haven't really thought it through too much and haven't tested it but if it works let me know!

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