Angular distance

In general, the smallest angle (angular distance) between two vectors is given by:

Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle a = \cos^{-1} \frac{A \cdot B}{\left | A \right | \cdot \left | B \right |} }

(if Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle A} and Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B} are unit/normalized, then this can be simplified further).

Given two angles Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle a_0} and Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle a_1} , you could substitute Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle A = \left [ \cos a_0, \sin a_0 \right ]} and Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B = \left [ \cos a_1, \sin a_1 \right ]} above, or you could use the following code:

// https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/4472
// a0 and a1 are in radians (always positive)
float delta_angle(float a0, float a1)
{
    return M_PI - fabs(fabs(a1 - a0) - M_PI);
}