Skip to Content
Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers
book

Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers

by Wendy Stahler
March 2004
Beginner
504 pages
9h 2m
English
New Riders
Content preview from Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers

Dot Product

Remember when you first learned the multiplication tables? Your teacher probably told you that 2 times 3 could be written as 2 × 3 or as 2 • 3, and that they mean the same thing. This statement is true for scalar quantities. However, it's not true for more complex structures, such as vectors. We'll first look at 2 • 3, which is called the dot product. Then we'll investigate the cross product, 2 × 3, in the next section.

The most important thing to remember about the dot product of two vectors is that it always returns a scalar value. Let's first discuss how to calculate it, and then we'll talk about what that number represents.

NOTE

Some math texts call the dot product of two vectors the scalar product because that is what the dot ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Mathematics for Game Programming and Computer Graphics

Mathematics for Game Programming and Computer Graphics

Penny de Byl

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0735713901Purchase book