Back to Physics in Simulations
AdvancedAdults
Raycasting
Raycasting is a technique used to determine what a ray, or a straight line, intersects with in a scene. It's like shining a laser pointer and seeing what it hits first.
In games and simulations, it has many uses:
- **Shooting mechanics:** To see if a bullet hits a target.
- **AI line of sight:** To determine if an enemy can "see" the player.
- **Determining what's under the mouse cursor:** To allow the player to interact with objects.
The basic algorithm for a ray-line intersection involves some vector math. You have a ray with an origin point and a direction vector. For each line segment in your scene (like the walls of a room), you solve a system of equations to see if and where the ray and the line intersect.
If the ray intersects multiple objects, you usually only care about the intersection point that is closest to the ray's origin. While the math can be complex, many physics libraries provide simple, highly-optimized raycasting functions. For example:
In games and simulations, it has many uses:
- **Shooting mechanics:** To see if a bullet hits a target.
- **AI line of sight:** To determine if an enemy can "see" the player.
- **Determining what's under the mouse cursor:** To allow the player to interact with objects.
The basic algorithm for a ray-line intersection involves some vector math. You have a ray with an origin point and a direction vector. For each line segment in your scene (like the walls of a room), you solve a system of equations to see if and where the ray and the line intersect.
If the ray intersects multiple objects, you usually only care about the intersection point that is closest to the ray's origin. While the math can be complex, many physics libraries provide simple, highly-optimized raycasting functions. For example:
hit_object = physics.raycast(origin, direction).Simple Raycast Logic
You have a list of objects, each with a `distance`. Write a function `find_closest_hit` that iterates through a list of `hits` and returns the one with the smallest distance. Return `None` if the list is empty.