Every kid learning math has to at the very least learn X and Y coordinates for graphs. That's the reason I think Y is the natural up, it just makes more sense to be in line with what everyone already know instead of flipping it around.

[–] moonlight@fedia.io 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I disagree – I think Z up is much more natural in this sense. X,Y is a plane, and it's much more natural to think of a plane as being horizontal, especially in a 3D environment with a ground plane. Z is the third dimension, perpendicular to that plane. Think about it this way, doesn't it makes way more sense to have a map with X,Y coordinates rather than X, Z coordinates?

[–] offspec@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like whiteboards have gone extinct or something. All of my math lectures from grade school to uni took place on a y-up surface. I can appreciate that there are multiple ways to skin a cat, but I feel like people just argue what's most convenient for their preference in this kind of situation.

[–] Redex68@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah you'd draw it on a vertical whiteboard, but in physics and math (or at least all the classes I had), you'd always draw a coordinate system with Z going up. I can understand why it would make sense for you to look at XY being a vertical plane, but I feel like it just makes more sense for XY to be the ground.

Also, convenience wise, especially in e.g. game dev, for 90% of use cases it's way more convenient for the first two coordinates to be the ground position and the last coordinate be the height. Whenever you're thinking of the coordinates of something, you'd probably first think about its ground position and then its height, in which case it's much simpler if those ground coords are at the start, instead of at the beginning and end of a vector.

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