Thread: Calculating Angle between two 2D Points, WITH A CATCH!

I need some help calculating the angle between two 2d points, but theres a slight twist. I'm working with a weird way of representing rotation.

Going clockwise, starting at WEST we have 0 degrees. At NORTH, it's -90 degrees. At EAST, it swaps from -180 degrees to 180 degrees, at SOUTH its 90 degrees, back down to 0 at WEST. Here is a picture:



What I need to do, is write a function that takes two 2D points, and calculates the angle from point A to point B, as this wierd 0 to -180, 180 to 0, value.

Anyone have any ideas? And no, I cannot use a standard 0-360 degrees representation, I have to solve this problem using this method of representing the angle.

Many thanks!

This would be an angle measured in standard position.

Assume the first point is at the origin. Then the difference in x values would be the x-coordinate of the second point and the difference in y-values would be its y-coordinate. Draw a quick sketch to see this. Then in the sketch you should be able to see a right triangle using the x-axis and a vertical to the second point.

Use this triangle to calculate the angle using right-triangle trig.



This gives the angle in standard position.

Note that you have taken the opposite of this twice, thus cancelling each other out. First, West is 0 degrees instead of East (as it would be in standard position). And second, North is at -90 degrees instead of South (as it would be in standard position).