How to scale the rotation of a quaternion - c++

Question

I am trying to do the equivalent of multiplying the velocity by the time between frames. I would imagine that doing this for quaternions would be done by raising them to a power. I have code to rotate an object based on my mouse movements. It has a main loop running at one frame rate and a physics loop running at a fixed frame rate. Here is the relevant part of the main loop:
glfwPollEvents();
Input::update();
window.clear(0,0,0,1);
rigidBody.angularVelocity *= glm::angleAxis(0.001f * Input::deltaMouse().x, glm::vec3(0,1,0));
rigidBody.angularVelocity *= glm::angleAxis(0.001f * Input::deltaMouse().y, glm::vec3(1,0,0));
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_A))
{
rigidBody.velocity -= float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(1,0,0);
}
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_D))
{
rigidBody.velocity += float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(1,0,0);
}
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_W))
{
rigidBody.velocity -= float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(0,0,1);
}
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_S))
{
rigidBody.velocity += float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(0,0,1);
}
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_LCONTROL))
{
rigidBody.velocity -= float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(0,1,0);
}
if(Input::getKey(Input::KEY_LSHIFT))
{
rigidBody.velocity += float(Time::getDelta()) * glm::vec3(0,1,0);
}
Here is the relevant part of the physics loop:
for(int i = 0; i < *numRigidBodies; i++)
{
rigidBodies[i].transform->getPos() += rigidBodies[i].velocity;
rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot() *= rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity;
}
rigidBodies[0].angularVelocity = glm::quat();
rigidBodies[0].velocity = glm::vec3();
This works fine, but when I try raising angular velocity to a power with glm::pow, the object rotates randomly and does not follow my mouse. I realize I could do this with a line of code like
rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot() *= glm::angleAxis((float)Time::getFixedDelta() * glm::angle(rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity), glm::axis(rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity));
but this seems needlessly complicated for the task. What is causing this issue, and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

Not sure exactly how to do it with the API you're using, but basically, you would use Quaternion::Slerp(). Slerp means "spherical linear interpolation".
Something like this(pseudocode) should work:
auto& rot = rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot();
auto goal = rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity * rot;
rot = rot.slerp(rot, goal, Time::deltaTime);
Edit:
I should note that this is not how I would approach this problem. I would just store the rotation around the X and Y axis as scalars and construct a new quaternion from them each frame.
Please excuse the sloppy pseudo code:
// previous x and y positions, could probably be set in MouseDown event
float lastX = ...;
float lastY = ...;
float xRotation = 0;
float yRotation = 0;
float rotationSpeed = 1.0;
void OnMouseMove(float x, float y) {
float dx = x - lastX;
float dy = y - lastY;
lastX = x;
lastY = y;
xRotation += dy * rotationSpeed * Time::deltaTime;
yRotation += dx * rotationSpeed * Time::deltaTime;
rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot() = eulerQuat(xRotation, yRotation, 0);
}

Answer 2

Turns out angular velocity is usually represented as a 3d vector where the direction is the axis and the magnitude is the angular speed. Replace this line of code:
rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot() *= rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity;
with this:
if(rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity != glm::vec3())
rigidBodies[i].transform->getRot() *= glm::quat(rigidBodies[i].angularVelocity * float(Time::getFixedDelta()));
and the physics system works as expected. The if check makes sure that angular speed is not 0.