WebGL Beginner's Guide

Parametric curves

There are many situations where we don't know the exact position that an object will have at a given time but we know an equation that describe its movement. These equations are known as parametric curves and are called like that because the position depends on one parameter: the time.

There are many examples of parametric curves. We can think for instance of a projectile that we shoot on a game, a car that is going downhill or a bouncing ball. In each case, there are equations that describe the motion of these objects under ideal conditions. The next diagram shows the parametric equation that describes free fall motion.

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