Dear open gl users, I am trying to make my first full open gl game and I have figured out how to do everything that I need except how to eliminate "gimble lock". I have searched all over the internet and have found some articles but my math skills are not good enough to understand what they are saying. I need an example to go by. I have been trying to solve this problem for too long. If anyone can help me, I''ll send you a check in the mail for we''ll discuss). Thank you for your time. roguetroop@hotmail.com

Quaternions are one way around this I believe, I assume youve encountered these and got confused by them?
I''m sure there are others but I dont know them.
I got some info on these somewhere, I''ll try and dig it up, I have some code but that wont explain the confusion that is quats.
You dont need to pay for info round here, we help because we got nothing better to do =)

Hi,
I am a Direct3D User but i had the same prob little bit agow, and i the way i fixed it was with the Up Vecter i just changed it when i need the back side of the sphere. But i dont know of OGL has a Up vecter in the camera Matrix???

on this site info is free, we like to help others out becuase we like to have help (for free) when we need it..



-VBLimits
Sorry about the Spelling..
www.VBLimits.com

Yes, quats are one way to solve the gimbal lock problem, and you can also use matrices.

Do a search on "matrices can be your friend" or just check out the opengl FAQ that is located at opengl.org. You can also do a search on "gimbal lock". I recommend you use google, that is a very good search engine.


For payment, you can send me a Geforce 3 card :D

ill settle for a geforce2mx
check the nv fog distance demo on my site

http://members.xoom.com/myBollux

Gimbal lock is not a problem, its a fact of 3d maths. There are two ways to solve it.
1) if you simply want to be able to store the direction a ship lets say if facing in 3d space then if you use 3 angles and rotate it first around the Y axis, then X then Z it easy to picture whats going on.
2) If however you a ship facing in some bizzare direction in 3d space and you want to rotate it around its local axis, not the worlds. What I mean by this is that if you rotate it aroud the Y axis you want the top of it to stay facing in the same direction then you need to store indivudaul matrices for it.
Check out my matrics tutorials on my website http://snw.cjb.net/ for info on how to do this.

PS anyone who would charg you for that information is suffer for some major superiority complex, if however you feel a need to pay me then e-mail and we''ll work something out ;-) A thank you if this is helpful would be more than enough though.

Thank you for all of your(free)help!
I have the rotation part working great using quats, but now I don''t know how to move forward (in relation to the screen - not the origin) no matter what the rotation is. Can anyone help me with this one?

More info needed. What are you using, matrices or something else?

If you are using matrices, then that is easy. Just do pos+=dir*speed. (pos & dir are the vectors in your matrix) See, simple! Hop over to opengl.org, and in their message forums, in beginner, do a search, and you will find a 90 message thread on matrix & what they all mean. Then you can do what I posted above.

You can mail me either the Geforce 3 I requested, or if you don''t have that, I''ll take a Athlon 1.2GHz. Your choice!
Oh, and if you don''t have any of that, then a kick ass game/demo will do just fine!



Zadkiel, gimbal lock IS a problem. Yes, it has to do with math, but it still is a problem.