Raycast

How it is used

Also a verb: raycast from the camera to the mouse position. Programmers talk about a raycast hitting or missing, ray length and layer masks. Hitscan weapons, which hit instantly, are usually made with raycasts.

Example sentences

1. We do a short raycast down from the feet to check if the player is on the ground.

2. The enemy raycasts to the player before shooting, so it never shoots through walls.

Common collocations

• cast a ray
• raycast hit
• layer mask
• hitscan weapon

Related terms

• collision detectionThe part of a game that checks whether two objects touch or overlap, for example a bullet hitting an enemy or the player landing on a platform.
• hitboxAn invisible shape around a character, or part of one, that the game uses to decide whether an attack or bullet has hit. It is often simpler than the visible model.
• physics engineThe system that simulates real-world physics in a game, such as gravity, collisions, friction and forces, so objects fall, bounce and push each other believably.
• navmeshShort for navigation mesh: a simplified map of the walkable surfaces in a level that game AI uses to find paths and move characters around obstacles.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• raycast · Game Development

More terms: Architecture, Design Patterns and Graphics

• framework
• dependency
• tech stack
• architecture
• design pattern
• trade-off
• scalable
• microservices
• monolith
• modular
• abstraction
• separation of concerns