Josh English <eng### [at] spiritonecom> wrote in message
news:371DF98C.F2D77DC2@spiritone.com...
> this seems more complicated to me, but I never studied optics, I just tutor high
school
algebra and
> geometry. I suppose if you could find the proper intersection of plane and cone and
find
a way to
> rotate it appropriately, it would work. I'm still stuck on finding a tangent to the
ellipse at any
> given point on the edge of the ellipse.
> I also haven't heard from Andrew in this thread, so I wonder if he has a solution or
not

I'm here. No, I have no solution ( I've yet to look at Margus's method ). I know so
little
about mathematics it's embarrasing, so I'm unlikely to be able to solve the problem
myself. I didn't expect it to cause this much difficulty though..I expected someone to
post a simple line of code to handle the vertical motion relative to the rotation. I
can
handle everything else with no problems.
I'm not sure why it is so complicated...the radius of the ellipse goes from 1 to 0.25
and
back, and all that is needed is a way of calculating any point inbetween, dependent on
rotation. I understand *what* to do, but have zero idea about how to do it.

I appreciate greatly your endeavours,

Andy

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