Translating Steering Behaviour Pursuit sample

Question

I've come across a C++ Sample of from Programming Game AI by Example. For the most part it is fairly understandable, the only thing confusing me is the reference to "m_pVehicle->Heading()" I'm not sure what it means by heading. If anyone could clarify this, I would really appreciate it.

 Vector2D SteeringBehaviors::Pursuit(const Vehicle* evader)
    {
      //if the evader is ahead and facing the agent then we can just seek
      //for the evader's current position.
      Vector2D ToEvader = evader->Pos() - m_pVehicle->Pos();

      double RelativeHeading = m_pVehicle->Heading().Dot(evader->Heading());

      if ((ToEvader.Dot(m_pVehicle->Heading()) > 0) &&
          (RelativeHeading < -0.95))  //acos(0.95)=18 degs
      {
        return Seek(evader->Pos());
      }

      //Not considered ahead so we predict where the evader will be.

      //the look-ahead time is proportional to the distance between the evader
      //and the pursuer; and is inversely proportional to the sum of the
      //agents' velocities
      double LookAheadTime = ToEvader.Length() /
                            (m_pVehicle->MaxSpeed() + evader->Speed());

      //now seek to the predicted future position of the evader
      return Seek(evader->Pos() + evader->Velocity() * LookAheadTime);
    }

Answer 1

On p.87 of the book, you will find the definition of m_vHeading as:

//a normalized vector pointing in the direction the entity is heading.
SVector2D m_vHeading;

If you look through the source, you will find:

Vector2D  Heading()const{return m_vHeading;}

Right before your code snippet he explains that if the target being pursued is ahead and almost directly facing the agent, it should just seek directly towards the target's position.

A way to easily determine if the target is ahead, or "in front", of the agent is by using the dot product of the vector from the agent's position to the target's position ToEvader and the agent's heading vector m_pVehicle->Heading(). If the dot product is greater than 0, the target is in front of the agent:

(ToEvader.Dot(m_pVehicle->Heading()) > 0)

You can read more on the dot product and it's uses on pages 23-26.