`dynamicAnchor` anchoring with no object hit

[ShaMan123]

Description 📝

I want dynamicAnchor to set the orbit point always, not only if there is a direct hit to an object.
Currently UX is ambiguous: orbiting around an object if hit or around the center of the viewport if not.

Suggested solution 💡

I am not sure how to achieve this, I expect depth to be correct somehow.
Perhaps the nearest object to the pointer (calculated by projecting objects to 2D) can provide the correct depth?
Or the N nearest objects can form a sphere, its centroid being the desired orbit center?

Alternative ⛕

No response

Additional context ☝️

No response

Validations ✅

• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that requests the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

[ShaMan123]

Perhaps depth can be settled simply by getting the depth value of the object that is closest to the camera

[agviegas]

Good call, that ambiguity is real. Right now the anchor only moves when the click lands on geometry: onPointerDown does a castRay, and over empty space it returns nothing, so the orbit point is just left where it was.

For the miss case you don't really need the nearest-object search or a centroid of N objects. Those add cost and heuristics for something that has a simpler deterministic answer: intersect the pointer ray with a plane through the current orbit target, facing the camera. That keeps the depth at the distance you're already focused on and just slides the anchor sideways to under the cursor. It always yields a point, it's cheap, and it feels predictable because the orbit radius doesn't jump when you drift off an object.

The nearest-object-depth idea works too, but it makes the orbit distance snap around as you move over gaps between objects, which tends to feel worse in practice than holding the current focus depth.

So the shape would be: in SimpleWorld's dynamic-anchor pointer handler, when castRay misses, fall back to the raycaster.mouse ray against a plane at controls.getTarget() with the camera's forward as the normal, and setOrbitPoint to that. Happy to take a PR along those lines if you want to have a go, otherwise we'll fold it in.