Reflecting on the Reflection Tag

Question

I was answering & editing a question involving (one kind of) reflection recently and noticed our reflection tag currently has no tag guidance and a mix of three very different meanings:

• Reflection rendering: visually representing the way that light bounces off surfaces and can produce images of surrounding objects.

  • Environment mapping without cubemap (need coordinates projection)

  • Getting the unity pro Water shader to reflect light sources such as spotlights

  • OpenGL Water reflection seems to follow camera yaw and pitch

• Physics/geometric reflection: calculating the velocity with which one object should bounce off another, or taking a chiral game entity and producing its mirror image.

  (Technically the real-world physics of this interpretation have a lot in common with the visible light case, but in games we'll generally be applying the math through very different sets of code / tools)

  • How does one calculate the surface normal, in 2D collisions?

  • Determine the bullet / particle reflection off of a circle in node js using SAT lib functions

  • Mythbuster: Mirror Operation with Quaternion

• Code reflection: software that introspects its own structure and types at runtime.

  • Making generic type T method as a layer of abstraction for Unty3D's EditorGUI field draw methods

  • How can I look up an object given only the name of its type? (I'm the guilty party here)

I think some cleanup here is due. Before making changes I want to solicit input on what the best way to disentangle these might be.

Answer 1

My current thought:

1. Re-tag the questions about visual effects with reflection-rendering

   • Make reflection a synonym of reflection-rendering since it's the most common use.

2. Un-tag the questions related to physics bounces / transform manipulation. I think these topics are already adequately categorized by the physics, transformation, and geometry tags.

3. Create a new reflection-code tag for the computer science meaning of reflection, with explicit tag guidance to use reflection-rendering if asking about how to code reflection shaders and the like. ;)

   (I was tempted to call this "introspection," but I think "reflection" is the first thing most devs type, so I think the tag is more discoverable this way. I don't have any hard evidence though, so please let me know if you agree or would prefer a different alternative)