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Linear Algebra in Game Programming?

Started by jlgosse Nov 30, 2004 at 10:42 AM 2 replies 7.1k views

Original Post

Nov 30, 2004 at 10:42 AM

I'm currently a first year computer science student at Memorial University found in Newfoundland, Canada, and yesterday I decided to register for Mathematics 2050 earlier than what I should have. I found out it's virtually all about vectors and matrices. From what I can tell, Linear Algebra is a very important part of graphics programming, and Matrices/Vectors is literally linear algebra. Can anyone verify this for me? Is it that important to game programming, and is it worth doing this course as soon as I can? Any information would gladly be appreciated, as I want to get into game programming, and I really want to know what math courses would be the best to do over the next 4-5 years. Thanks, jlgosse

zander76

Nov 30, 2004 at 10:59 AM

Hello,

Yes vectors and matricies are very important to game developers. The would be one of the most important things that you will have to understand.
Other then that, you will want to do a lot of trig. Depending on how serious you want to go, calculus and algebra will help for deriving your own formulas and understanding some of the really heavy material.
If you are just interested in graphics then that will help. Physics could also be useful to you for forces applied (ie, defining a car).

Ben

roos

Nov 30, 2004 at 11:31 AM

Yeah, I definitely would take linear algebra asap

In particular you should work on understanding how to apply the basics in different situations:

-Dot product, scalar and vector projection
-Cross product
-Linear transformations
-How to compose individual transformations together
-Quaternions (not hard)
-Equations of lines, planes, spheres
-Operations involving normal vectors
-Etc.

roos

jlgosse

Nov 30, 2004 at 11:33 AM

It seems pretty important anyway, so I thought I best do it now rather than later in my degree.

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