quaternions...sick of them.

dear /Sado & Maso/,

whats up with all those 3Dimensional Engines using quaternions? Why dont they just use a simple normalised 3DVector to descripe the Orientation of Objects instead of quaternions?

Anyone got a link to an easy understandable explanation for orientation quaternions?

why do you need 3 gimbals anyway? it looks like 2 is enough; there are only 2 angles in a spherical coordinate system. but i know shit about graphics programming so whatever.