I can't figure out how layerMasks work on Raycast...

I have a script that takes a LayerMask as parameter:



Inside it I have this code:

Code (CSharp):

1. if(Physics.Raycast(Trans.position,-Trans.up,out hit,GroundLayer)) {
2.             IsGrounded = hit.distance<=GroundDistance;
3.             Debug.Log(hit.collider.gameObject.layer);
4.          } else {
5.             IsGrounded = false;
6.          }

According to the official documentation, on the layer mask parameter you specify which layer(s) should be included on the test, so if I specify "Road" only I should be seeing only 9's on the console, but I'm also getting 10's (Walls), which makes me doubt of the truthfulness of the manual... If I use the opposite setting (everything except "Road") I should be seeing only 10's on the console, but it remains empty, which means it's ignoring walls also. If I set it to everything except "Wall" it also ignores both. If I set it to "Wall" only get exactly the same result as with "Road". I also tested with "UI" only but got the same result. It seems like an everything of nothing situation.

If I inspect the value of GroundLayer on the debugger I see 512 when it is set to "Road" only, which I understand, and -513 when is set to everything except "Road", which I don't understand.

I'm confused I don't know if I'm missing something, if I'm doing something wrong or if it is a bug.

 

I made a test project in order to try to understand better what's happening and what I found is that you get two different results depending on how you set the layermask. If you set it to "Nothing" and then enable layers Raycast always hits the collider, however if you set it to "Everything" and then disable the layers one by one Raycast never hits the collider. I already filed a bug report: (Case 1036365)

 

The F***, how is this a thing?

I mainly use layermasks for overlap sphere rather then raycast.
Anyone one knows if there's a problem there as well?
I'll try and do some testing when I have time

 

I'm sorry you must suffer in this way, @georgeq. You're helping me hold off on investigating raycasts for a bit longer...

Godspeed!

 

Hi,

There is no Raycast overload with LayerMask without maxDistance. The culprit is a implicit cast in LayerMask to int and subsequently cast to float.
So the overload is using your LayerMask as a maxDistance.

[]'s

 

Wow... you are right! and I can't believe I didn't though of that. C# is so strict with data type conversions that one tends to forget implicit conversion is part of the language, thanks for the clarification. Sorry. All apologizes.