When I was learning graphics, the reasoning around quaternions was to avoid "gimbal lock". It was just taken as orthodoxy without question.
I think going forward next gen 3D engines will have to account for the improvements in GPU hardware realized by advances in machine learning. Mixed precision matrix multiply at massively parallel scale. As well as the demands of next-gen games. Things like real time ray tracing of deformable meshes ;)
Same critique as I have for the article, though: just because the subject is poorly taught doesn't necessarily mean that the subject needs to be replaced. The key here is that gimbal lock isn't a feature of quaternions, it's a feature of Euler angles: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8980/euler-angles-a...
Quaternions can be normalized, thus eliminating numerical errors than can accumulate if you multiply a rotation matrix many times. These numerical errors make the matrix non-unitary, and introduce weird stretches and skews into the transformation.
I think going forward next gen 3D engines will have to account for the improvements in GPU hardware realized by advances in machine learning. Mixed precision matrix multiply at massively parallel scale. As well as the demands of next-gen games. Things like real time ray tracing of deformable meshes ;)