Is it safe to cast my 2D points to 3D points for a library which only takes Vector3s?

Question

I need to cast a ray in 2D space for bullet collision detection, but the Ray.Intersects method requires a BoundingBox which uses vector3's not vector2's. My question is should I just ignore the Z value and pretend it's a vector2? Raycasting is already slow enough so I think having calculations done in an unnecessary 3rd deminsion should be eliminated even if the value is just 0, but I don't know.

So should I implement my own raycasting system maybe using Bresenham's line algorithm which is for 2 dimensions or should I go the cheap way and make a bounding box a bounding plane?

Answer 1

Yes, you can just use Vector3's where the z-value is 0.

In geometry, any 2D point also exists in the 3rd dimension. In a 2D game, everything could be represented with Vector3s where the z-values are all identical. Often in a 2D game, you use the Z value as the depth, to draw a tree in the background (low Z value) or the main character in the foreground (higher Z value).