in a Three.js app I want to get the object that the perspective camera is pointing at and to do that I read the raycaster docs. All the docs that I found talk about doind raycasting with camera and a Vector2 from the mouse coordinates, but I don't want to use the 2d coordinates of the mouse. The camera can rotate for any reason: click and drag the screen, touch control or even VR control, I just want to raycast from the center point of the perspective camera and set as "selected" the object it looks at.

Any suggestions?

in a Three.js app I want to get the object that the perspective camera is pointing at and to do that I read the raycaster docs. All the docs that I found talk about doind raycasting with camera and a Vector2 from the mouse coordinates, but I don't want to use the 2d coordinates of the mouse. The camera can rotate for any reason: click and drag the screen, touch control or even VR control, I just want to raycast from the center point of the perspective camera and set as "selected" the object it looks at.

Any suggestions?

• javascript
• 3d
• three.js
• raycasting

2 Answers 2

THREE.Raycaster.set() expects origin and a direction vectors:

origin — The origin vector where the ray casts from.

direction — The direction vector that gives direction to the ray. Should be normalized.

Set the cameras world position as origin and its world direction as direction:

var raycaster = new THREE.Raycaster();

raycaster.set( camera.getWorldPosition(), camera.getWorldDirection() );

var intersects = raycaster.intersectObjects( objectsArray );
if ( intersects.length > 0 ) {
    //...
}

The code from Falk still works but Three.js (>r90) requires you to define a target [1]:

target is now required

All you have to do is:

let camera_world_pos = new THREE.Vector3();
let camera_world_dir = new THREE.Vector3();
let raycaster = new THREE.Raycaster();

camera.getWorldPosition(camera_world_pos);
camera.getWorldDirection(camera_world_dir);
raycaster.set(camera_world_pos, camera_world_dir);
let intersects = raycaster.intersectObjects( objectsArray );
if ( intersects.length > 0 ) {
    //...
}

[1] https://github./mrdoob/three.js/issues/12231