I hope someone can help me with this. I jsut started reading OpenGL game programming and i am in the 3D graphics theory part. It is discussing the pythagorean theorem, it gives the formula but not an example the forumla in the book is |A| = sqrt(A2 + A2 + A2) the 2s are the exponential operators(?) but anyway, how can i plug the value of A into that equation if i dont know what A is to begin with? This may be a dumb question but i would appreciate any help i can get.

It probably said

|A| = sqrt( A1^2 + A2^2 + A3^2 )

^ Thanks to Tjoppen: I accidently used double lines instead of single earlier

which means the magnitude of the vector A (it's length) is the square root of [ the first component squared plus the second component squared plus the third component squared ].

So basically sqrt( x^2 + y^2 + z^2 ) = length. that's the pythagorean thereom in 3 dimensions.

[edited by - matt calabrese on October 14, 2002 5:57:35 PM]

Just a quick note:

||A|| = normalize A
|A| = magnitude of A