Physics Raycast vs. Physics2D Raycast

Why does Physics Raycast use:

Code (CSharp):

1. RaycastHit hit;
2.             if (Physics.Raycast(transform.position, aimdir, out hit, distanceOfAim, layerMask))
3.             {
4.                
5.             }

but Physics Raycast2D uses:

Code (CSharp):

1.             RaycastHit2D hit = (Physics2D.Raycast(transform.position, aimdir, distanceOfAim, layerMask));
2.            
3.             if (hit.collider != null)
4.             {
5.  
6.             }

 

I don't know the answer, but my guess is it either has to do with the underlying physics engine API's (2D uses Box2D, while PhysX has been what 3D uses), or they just thought that the way they wrote the 2D version is better. Physics2D was added much later than the original Physics API, and Unity tries to avoid altering important API's unless they have good reason, so they don't unnecessarily break projects and tutorials.

 

I've been on these forums for over 10 years (almost 10 years active, longer lurking).

In all that time I've never seen Unity come out and actually comment on why they made a specific choice with their API (I have seen blogs that sort of talk about it, and I bet a handful of posts might exist... but I doubt it). So I doubt they'll come and answer this one.

The best we can offer is speculation.

And as someone who has worked on large teams in corporate settings like Unity's dev team would be. Well... you're often broken into different teams from one another. The 2 APIs were very very likely to be written by different teams all together due to the many years between both development. And no one noticed the difference, or cared about the difference, before releasing it.

And then once released, as Joe-Censored pointed out, they don't change it really. It'd break upgrading projects from previous versions to new versions (or require developing tools that altered your code on your behalf which can be flawed especially if using 3rd party code/plugins).

Why?

Why do you hang your toilet paper the direction you hang it?

 

I imagine you're both right, it's definitely easier the second way, which leads me to question why the option to do it both ways for Physics 3D wasn't added?

 

Second option is actually worst.
Structure is going to be copied on return even when no object was hit.

Now check out this two examples below. You don't have to define RaycastHit hit, outside.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. RaycastHit[] raycastHits = new RaycastHits[count];
3. if (Physics.Raycast(transform.position, aimdir, out raycastHits[0], distanceOfAim, layerMask)){
4. }
5.  
6. if (Physics.Raycast(transform.position, aimdir, out RaycastHit hit, distanceOfAim, layerMask)){
7. }
8.  

 

I'm with koirat, the original option is the better option for many reasons. But I'm not hear to gripe about that.

1) I don't use Unity in 2d
2) It's not like it's going to change. The API is established.

 

I don't believe C# allows function overloads with different return types, so they'd have to create a separate raycast function for returning a hit object instead of a bool. But then the naming of the functions won't make sense, since Physics.Raycast still returns a bool, Physics2D.Raycast returns an object, and then the new Physics.RaycastSortOfLike2DVersion returns an object. People would still complain

I've noticed that Unity doesn't like to use a lot of "out" parameters in their API. I don't think they are very beginner friendly for people learning C#. That might have something to do with why the 2D version doesn't use one.