[dogline]

Thank you. I guess I need to back up. This is a vector, not just an identifier, and direction and angle seem important. I need to look up how the encoding is normally done, since this isn't obvious if you haven't worked in this domain before.

[kevindamm]

The encoding is typically learned, and if possible is part of the ANN so that it can be adjusted along with the other parameters.

A good place to start on that topic is the word2vec paper.