Why is there no LineCast?

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Godot Version

4.6

Question

Hi, I'm trying to understand why godot has RayCast and ShapeCast, but there's no such thing as a LineCast. Put it differently, if ShapeCast3D is used to detect a volume by casting a shape along a vector, couldn't you detect an area in 2d by casting a line along a vector? Why am I specifying the depth of the line when only the front edge actually matters? If a raycast is casting a point along a vector to get 1D detection, then casting a line along a vector would give you 2D detection no?

Is there some weird reason behind the scenes that you specify not only the leading line but the entire shape?Maybe I’m way off base, but this is something that really irks me because I always end up overthinking how much depth the shape should have when I don’t think it should actually be defined at all in the first place.

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Hi,

To me it sounds like you are describing a RayCast. :thinking:
Is it possible, that you used another engine that used different terminolgy for those?

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What’s your use case? What are you running into so commonly that requires a new type of ray cast? Can you draw a picture of how line cast differs from a raycast or shapecast? It sounds like a ray cast to me, or a thin-box shape cast?

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