what difference are a radius and a degree?
Radians are a different measurement, Personally I don’t use them but some things like CFrames use them.
Degrees are your usually measurement that is used with orientation.
They both are a means of getting or setting rotation but degrees is much nicer to work with.
This is where you can use math.rad() to turn degrees into radians. This way you can always use degrees regardless.
Heres Some Sources that may show more:
https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/recipes/Rotate-a-Part-using-Radians
https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/recipes/Rotate-a-Part-Using-Degrees
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I think you mean radians, rather than radius (radius is the length of half the diameter of a circle).
They are two different ways to measure angles. Degrees are easier for humans to count, radians are easier for a lot of mathematics as it has a direct relationship to the radius of a circle.
To convert between the two, rad = (π×deg)/180
such that a full circle (360 degrees) is equal to 2π. Roblox has built in math functions to do the conversion for you, with math.rad( d ) and math.deg( r ).
1 radian will take you 1 radius around the circumference of the circle, hence π radians is half a circumference and 2π radians is the same as π×Diameter which is the full circle circumference.
More benefits of radians: Why Radians? | Teaching Calculus
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It isn’t exactly true that radians are more or less mathematically correct, the only difference when you are using them is that radians is on a much smaller scale for rotation which means you can have a lot more accuracy.
Given the fact that you can translate between the two you can use either with translation. If you are a perfectionist using radians does indeed offer much more accuracy for rotation.
One thing to note is that you can still rotate by decimals with degrees so unless you really want to be picky about it it doesn’t matter too much so long as it is mathematically correct. If you become adept at translation it wont make any difference at all, I say this because I like to keep all my measurements in the same units, I don’t like having to use radians and degrees together so I translate them immediatly.
But BanTech is not wrong saying that radians offer more. They are far more accurate. The only reason I have said that it doesnt matter is because there is no need to fine tune a rotation down to.
Heres a example
Fine tune Degree Rotation = 0.05 = 0.0008726646 Radians
Fine tune Radian Rotation = 0.05 = 2.864789 Degrees
When using a computer to do the math it all comes down to personal preference. When translating they both can have the same capabilities but degrees is much nicer to work with in correlation to world space.
I didn’t say they were more or less correct. I said they were easier for the mathematics, which they are. It’s nothing to do with accuracy (as that only pertains to computers and computation). I’m talking about mathematics, and there’s a reason we use radians more often.
I do go on to explain this reason, which is to do with why radians were invented in the first place - their direct relationship to the radius of the circle and the distance travelled around the circumference as well as the projected distance along the diameter.
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