mouse cursor only works when aframe inspector is open?

Question

When I add

<a-scene
    cursor="rayOrigin: mouse;"
    raycaster="objects: .rayclick;"
>

and

<a-entity id="clickabl1" class="rayclick" rayclick>

and

AFRAME.registerComponent('rayclick', {
    init: function () {
        this.el.addEventListener('click',  (evt) => {
            alert(`I was clicked at ${this.el.id}`);
        });
    }
});

I end up with a strange situation... seemingly, the code does nothing, no click functionality at all--except, when I open the aframe inspector, suddenly it works perfectly. Then, when I close the inspector, back to nothing working.

What could this possibly mean?

Seems to be working: jsfiddle.net/w97t12rp. Do you have an example with the issue? — Piotr Adam Milewski
@PiotrAdamMilewski Thank you so much, I've been looking for a raycaster that works with Aframe & Blippar and all examples fired the raycaster on hovering a selectable model as well. This works perfectly for me! — Wilrick B

Kyle Baker Kyle Baker · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-27T19:53:30

I ended up later discovering that the inspector uses a mouse cursor that has no objects filter, which can make it work whenever other cursors might fail. I've also found that there are some subtle, difficult to reproduce bugs with cursors at times in current A-Frame.

But that explains why the cursors likely worked in the inspector, but not otherwise.

There is also the question of how the ray from a mouse cursor is drawn--its origin is going to be different when the inspector is open, so analyze that closely. (This is where I start finding subtle errors, especially if you adjust it after creating it.)

mouse cursor only works when aframe inspector is open?

1 Answers