Prediction Algorithm

The pic helped me but I still don't know half of what you are saying. Probably because I'm not really trying to. But then again I am 16 and still in high school so I figgure that by the time I'm done trying to decipher what y'all have been saying that you will have come to a conclusion and solved teh problem.

Here are the formulae for hitting a nonaccelerating target with a projectile in gravity-free 3-space.

Let θt be the angle to the target on the xy-plane and φt be the angle to the target up from the xy-plane. Let θv and φv be the angles at which the target is moving, and let Vt be the target's speed. Let Vs be the shot's speed, and let θs and φs be the angles at which to shoot.

φs = φt + arcsin(Vt / Vs * sin(φv - φt))
θs = θt + arcsin((Vt * cos φt)/(Vs * cos φs) * sin(θv - θt))

So the shot's velocity is (Vs, θs, pi/2 - φs) to hit a target with initial position (Rt, θt, pi/2 - φt) and velocity (Vt, θv, pi/2 - φv). Note that Rt, the range to the target, is only needed to find out how long it'll take to hit, not to actually aim.

@qaanol, on May 1 2006, 03:19 PM, said in Prediction Algorithm:

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I like biscuits too...