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Re:Langton's Ant by pugworthy on Friday June 07, 2019 @12:26PM (#20126231)
Watching the video, it's noteworthy that this system that works and renders in a Cartesian coordinate system is able to essentially create 60 degree rotations of a pattern without any trig function.

Given that a rise of 1 and run of around 0.577 will give you approximately 60 degrees (60.01505399), I have to wonder if there is some correlation between that approximate ratio and the number of steps required to complete the pattern.

With that thought, it's noteworthy that the pattern isn't quite right when it finally comes back to the beginning - which essentially is a little bit of rounding error at the end. That makes sense if what I'm imagining to be a correlation above is true, because a slope/offset to create a perfect 60 degrees is an irrational number.

Re:Langton's Ant by empath75 on Friday June 07, 2019 @12:36PM (#20126340)
It’s on a hexagonal grid.
Re:Langton's Ant by pugworthy on Friday June 07, 2019 @12:39PM (#20126382)
Doh. I went waaaay too deep in the thought rabbit hole...
Re:Langton's Ant by pcwalton on Friday June 07, 2019 @04:57PM (#20128546)
30 and 60 degrees don't need trig functions. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometric_constants_expres...