How to draw a laser line ?

[YouGroove]

I think in some transparent 3D thin cylinder mesh and use raycast to determine if it hits something before it's max lenght.

Can it be done in another way ?

 

How to modify the lenght of cylinder mesh in real time ?

Some local Scaling of Z value ?

[shadmar]

yes

[Rick]

Good idea on the laser like this! I do figure out the distance my bullet tracer needs to do, so that can be used directly with this to figure out the length.

[AggrorJorn]

This will be actually part of an official tutorial. However instead of a cylinder, the laser is constructed from vertices and triangles.

[YouGroove]

Hummm ... why not simple 3D lines ?

Hw it is done in simple commercial games ? REsident evil for example ?

[Tim Shea]

Are you sure it's done that way is commercial games? Because I think if you just draw a line it's going to look wonky with a uniform thickness.

 

As far as I can see from a quick search, it is not a line: https://www.google.com/search?q=resident+evil+laser+sight&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=zaT3UsW-HY_poASa3YLADg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1360&bih=643#q=resident+evil+laser+sight&tbm=isch&imgdii=_

 

It has diminishing thickness, and a sort of noisy transparent texture applied.

[Flexman]

And add little corona at the end to look like a spot scattering reflected laser light.