I have been trying to implement the wave equation described in this paper ("Water Simulating in Computer Graphics," Kai Li and Liming Wu) in Java. Part of the paper discusses modeling waves as a sum of sine waves ("sine wave piling"); in that section there an equation for describing a single sine wave:
Y(x,y,t)= A * cos(w *(x,y)+ wt * t + FI;
where
A
= amplitude of waveL
= wave lengthw
= spatial angular frequencys
= speedwt
= temporal angular frequencyd
= directionFI
= initiatory phase
I understand that it returns a vector, but I don't see what this section of the formula means:
w *(x,y)
I believe that w
is a vector, but I'm not sure if it's a 3D vector or 2D vector, and how it is used. If you have time, could you please explain this formula to me?