Why normalise a vector

It is also called a unit vector. Weisstein, Eric W. Explore thousands of free applications across science, mathematics, engineering, technology, business, art, finance, social sciences, and more. Walk through homework problems step-by-step from beginning to end. Hints help you try the next step on your own. Unlimited random practice problems and answers with built-in Step-by-step solutions.

Practice online or make a printable study sheet. Active 6 years, 4 months ago. Viewed 7k times. Improve this question. Philip Allgaier 2, 3 3 gold badges 22 22 silver badges 32 32 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. I'm sure there are more technical explanations, but that's the gist of it. Improve this answer. Christian Christian 2, 14 14 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges. Both would have the positive length of 5 squaring deletes the minus. Philip Allgaier Philip Allgaier 2, 3 3 gold badges 22 22 silver badges 32 32 bronze badges.

More info Why does it have to be 1 specifically? How would I use it? Thraka 1 1 gold badge 3 3 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. Zaenille Zaenille 4 4 bronze badges. It's simply the most convenient thing to do : normalize vectors to unit 1 length. If you do not normalize, the math with still go through, but the results will distorted. Note Christian's answer, where he explains why normalization is important.

Maybe the effect ends up being what you want for your game, but this is not solid mathematics. It's about being the multiplicative identity, not just being "easy". Multiplication by 2 is quite easy, but being off by a factor of 2 would still skew your output. Ask Question.

Asked 9 years, 7 months ago. Active 18 days ago. Viewed 56k times. Trying to understand vectors a bit more. What is the meaning or 'inside' purpose of doing this.

A bit of a maths question, I apologize, but I am really not clear in this topic. Improve this question. HungryCoder HungryCoder 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. It is easy to see that a normalized vector has length 1. Improve this answer. Jay Bosamiya Jay Bosamiya 2, 1 1 gold badge 12 12 silver badges 33 33 bronze badges. Gives the clear picture about importance of normalization.

This is a very good explanation. In fact, I always love these kind of questions because it produces this kind of answer and some of the people here always explain the jargon on its own without explaining the 'why' on why its called. I am developer and get caught up by jargons which I don't care at all , but sometimes there are some point where the reason on their naming matters to me more that what it does.

For example Intending vs Intended methods in Espresso unit test and map vs flatMap methods in reactive. Here is the article: Unit vectors Ok, so we know what a vector is. That circle contains all unit vectors in existence for 2 dimensions: So, what is so special about unit vectors? Normalization Taking any vector and reducing its magnitude to 1. This happens because we will be able to tell that the guard is facing towards him: if BA.

While plotting the resulting scalar! It all makes sense now, this is a Cosine function! We can say that, then, as a rule By comparing the normal of the collision point with a previously computed angle.

Adelin Adelin This was a really good article. I think they have since edited and cut out many portions of it. You can check the article here: docs. Adelin Yeah, I've seen that, but you are referencing the latest documentation. As WeirdElfB0y have said, they've changed the article a bit, that's why I've thought to put the original link here. But I can delete my comment, if you want. That's a bit like asking why we multiply numbers. It comes up all the time. Normalized vectors also known as unit vectors are, basically, a fact of life.

SirGuy SirGuy Thanks a lot. Now I have a better understanding. The matrice representation helped a lot! StanlyMoses A vector can be thought of in terms of two components - a direction and a magnitude. By dividing a vector by its magnitude, we keep only the directional component and discard the magnitude. This is useful for many operations such as projection.

Re Shuklaswag's comment. Less explicit data and more implicit data in the processing pipeline being able to assume unit length 1, for instance makes for much faster processing. You are making its length 1 - finding the unit vector that points in the same direction.

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