Reviewing Our Knowledge of Triangles

If there’s one area of mathematics that you want to focus on during your educational journey through graphics and games programming, make sure it is vector mathematics. I cannot stress enough how important having a thorough knowledge of this area is to your success in developing your skills in this domain. Trigonometry, which examines the relationships between side lengths and angles in triangles, underpins many of the vector functions. As such, we will be exploring the magic of triangles herein.

Initially, for me, vectors and triangles were taught as separate ideas. It wasn’t until I started using vectors in my game programming that it suddenly became clear how understanding triangles was such a big part of understanding vectors. Also, vectors are just an extension of the mathematics of triangles.

Triangles would have to be one of the most interesting and useful geometrical shapes. Mathematically, their properties are fundamental...