Documentation for three.js controls?

Question

three.js comes with many useful controls, which cause camera movement in response to keyboard and mouse input.

They are all at https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/master/examples/js/controls and accessed in the code as e.g.THREE.OrbitControls .

However, I can't find any documentation or comments that says what situation to use what control for or what they are intended to do.

Can anyone point me to this information, or do I have to analyze the code to figure out if, for example, I prefer FlyControls to FirstPersonControls?

Solution 1

The documentation for the controls does exist, but it was deleted from the repository here. Seems like a bizarre thing to do, but there is an explanation of sorts here. I guess the docs were very incomplete anyway and it was easier to delete them than to finish them. :-p

Solution 2

The source code for most of the controls contains pretty decent comments. I know this isnt as good as proper documentation but it really helps to get a handle on how to set up the controls

Comments

[ArtOfWarfare]

At least the THREE.OrbitControls source code has a few lines of comments explaining how it works/why it exists at the start of the file. That's much better than I can say for THREE.TrackballControls which has a grand total of 21 comments, most of them fewer than 9 characters long and none of which explain why the file exists or how to use it.

[LarsH]

Some helpful information about orbit vs. trackball controls is at stackoverflow.com/a/18581760/423105

[foobarbecue]

You seriously think the controls are self-explanatory from the name? "Fly" and "Path" and "PointerLock" and "Oculus" and "Transform"? Each one of these is not obvious and has a host of parameters that are in themselves not obvious. Sadly, I'm afraid you may be right; there's just no documentation. Absurd. I'll leave it a while longer in hopes that someone will be able to point to a useful reference.

[GuyGood]

Yes i think the controls are self-explanatory. Maybe just ask what you do not understand. As there are examples for all the controls, where is the problem? Fly = Fly-Mode, path-controls let you choose a path to move along and Oculus is of course meant to be used with the Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display. And as there are examples for EVERY controls-type, this is no big deal to choose the correct one for your use case but I guess you do not even know what you want. Also it seems you don't want to google for your answer because for Trackball or Pointerlock you could find the ideas behind them.

[GuyGood]

anyway, good luck reading through all the code for all controls until you know what they are for O.o

[Gordon]

Looks like only the FirstPersonControls were documented at that time; the rest were just empty boilerplate. Now there is OrbitControls in the documentation, luckily that is the one I was looking for!