Allowing player to aim gun with raycasts

I have a working pistol (3d) that spawns bullets with velocity when the left button is pressed and I also have a 2D crosshair that is positioned at the centre of the camera. The problem is that when I shoot bullets they naturally go off target as the pistol is slightly to the right of the camera and not in the centre of the camera like the crosshair. I’ve heard that using raycasts can help this but am unsure how, any thoughts?

 

You don't really need raycasts of any kind. Just spawn the bullet at "theCamera.transform.position" with rotation "theCamera.transform.rotation" and set its velocity to "speed * theCamera.transform.forward"

 

Wouldn’t this make the bullet appear to be coming from the players eyes and not the barrel of the gun?

 

Ah ok I see. So what you want is for the bullet to still come from the gun, which is off center, but you want it to travel at what the camera is looking at? Yes you can use raycasts for this. Something like:

Code (CSharp):

1.         RaycastHit hit;
2.         Ray ray = Camera.main.ViewportPointToRay(new Vector3(0.5f, 0.5f, 0f));
3.  
4.         Vector3 hitPoint;
5.         if (Physics.Raycast(ray, out hit)) {
6.            hitPoint = ray.GetPoint(hit.distance);
7.         } else {
8.            hitPoint = ray.GetPoint(10000/* or some very far distance */);
9.         }
10.  
11.         Vector3 bulletDirection = hitPoint - bulletSpawnPoint;

You can then assign your bullet velocity and rotation based on the bulletDirection vector. This way it will travel towards what your camera is looking at.

 

Did you search the Lean section for "shooting with raycasts"?

https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/let-s-try-shooting-with-raycasts#

 

Ok thank you!