Camera controls

In this section, we are going to make the camera more useful. We will extend the camera class to create an Orbital Camera. Many 3D content creation tools such as 3DS Max or Unity3D use Orbital Cameras to navigate a 3D scene.

Getting ready

We are going to implement an Orbital Camera that will help us visualize what is happening within our physics simulations. This camera has three public functions that need to be called when input is received. The camera also has an update function that should be called at the end of every frame. The three functions that need to be called on input are Rotate, Zoom, and Pan. The Update function should always be the last camera function to be called during a frame.

How to do it…

Follow these steps to create a new Orbital Camera. Orbit cameras are used by most 3D Content Creation applications to view a 3D scene. Sometimes, these are referred to as free cameras:

1. Start declaring the OrbitCamera class in Camera.h by declaring the protected variables...