What do wiggly lines on the rotation tool mean?

Unity Engine
1

In the scene view if I zoom in on really tiny objects, and use the rotation tool, its lines are wiggly:

6983192--824087--upload_2021-3-28_10-19-40.png
6983192--824087--upload_2021-3-28_10-19-40.png981×585 63.2 KB

Is this a feature or just a graphical glitch? I took it to mean that floating point precision might be so low at that size that transformations might not work correctly but maybe I’m reading too much into it?

2

Never seen this before but yes - it’s probably related to floating point precision. Do you happen to be a good distance away from the origin? (128 units or more for example)

3

Hmm, yes, this particular object is 500 units away and like 0.01 in diameter so it would make sense.

4

You only have about 6 digits of actual accurate data with single precision floats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-precision_floating-point_format

Quote: “This gives from 6 to 9 significant decimal digits precision”

Position 500 takes 2.5 digits, 0.01 takes another 2, leaving you only 1.5 decimal digits. The pixels around that circumference are quite a lot more than you can represent with that.

5

Yes, this is floating point precision. You will also see the effects of this if you zoom in too closely on an object.