Disable a pan axis in OrbitControls

Questions
,
1

Hi everybody,

I’m wondering if it is possible to limit the OrbitControls panning feature to just one axis, for example only allowing the user to pan in the y axis but not x.

The documentation says its possible to disable a single axis when rotating but unfortunately nothing about my case.

Greetings,
Alexander

2

Hey,

Well you could lock the camera and the orbit.target when panning.
Like this:

orbit.addEventListener( 'change', function(){
   //...
   this.target.y = 0;
   camera.position.y = 0;
   //...
}

This will keep the view fixed on Y. Only left and right pan is possible.
But you may want to do this only when panning, not when orbiting.

2 Likes
3

I’d rather like to limit it to only the y axis, so only left and right is possible. :smiley:

4

haha sorry. updated my post…

5

Thank you very much it does work! Do you maybe know as well how I can limit the panning distance? :smiley:

For example I only want to allow panning in either direction for a little bit.

6

This heavily depends on the use case… For a very basic and simple example, something like this does the trick:

orbit.addEventListener( 'change', function(){
    if (this.target.x < -1){
        this.target.x = -1;
        camera.position.x = -1;
    } else if (this.target.x > 1){
        this.target.x = 1;
        camera.position.x = 1;
    }
})
1 Like