pitch in [-90,90]

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1

Hi, i am trying to build a pitch meter for a flying game… The problem is that the pitch is between -90 and 90 with weird results. For example when going down the pitch first goes to -90 and afterwards increases again. I would prefer a 360 degree calculation or -180 to 180 in which i can see the difference between up or down. I read about quaternions, but i really can’t figure out how to visualize this correctly the way i want. Any workarounds currently? I only found topics with bugreports about it…

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2

Hi ,

Unfortunately, what you are running into is Gimbal Lock, which is common with rotations, especially along the Y axis (pitch). This is not a bug but an expected behavior that must be taken into account when working with rotators. More information can be found here:

Additional information on quaternion math and spatial rotation can be found here:

There are several methods to get around Gimbal Lock, the easiest would be to rotate the actor along the X axis (yaw) as opposed to the Y axis (pitch). Another (significantly more difficult) would be to manually convert the rotator to a quaternion and then back to a rotator, which should allow you to work through Gimbal Lock and continue rotating correctly.

3

Are there any examples out there? this seems highly complicated for something which seems so simple.

4

If you are looking into c++ options, there is a possibility this will work:

Otherwise, it would be best to ask this on the forums in the blueprint scripting section, developers in the community may have some ideas that could help.

5

Thanks for all the help, C++ is not an issue. I will look into it!

6

I’m resurrecting an old thread here but I ran in to the same problem and wanted to add the solution that I found thanks to the above answer. It was a lot easier than I thought but basically all I did was reference the X value of an arrow that I rotated so that it was on the Pitch axis. That way I didn’t have to rotate my mesh which would have messed up the rest of the logic to drive my ship. Once I plugged that value in it was a perfect -180 to 180.