# onPointerMissed click location

**URL:** <https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Tags:** react-three-fiber\
**Created:** [October 3, 2024, 3:51am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340 "2024-10-03T03:51:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bralax](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.threejs.org/bralax/32/52343_2.png) [@bralax](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/bralax)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 3:51am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340/1 "2024-10-03T03:51:35Z")

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I am working on a project using React-Three-Fiber and have a use case where I want to add an object to the scene when a user clicks somewhere where there are no meshes present. I know I can use the Canvas’s `onPointerMissed` to get notified when a user clicks on the canvas but it doesn’t hit a mesh but the event here is a standard DomEvent so how can I determine the position within the scene to insert the object?

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**Author:** ![mjurczyk](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.threejs.org/mjurczyk/32/10995_2.png) [@mjurczyk](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/mjurczyk)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 5:00am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340/2 "2024-10-03T05:00:59Z")

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> [@bralax](#):
>
> […] how can I determine the position within the scene to insert the object […]

If the click doesn’t hit anything = there’s no position. Can’t read position of nothing 👀

Consider adding a ground lane to the scene (that spans wide on X and Z axes, can also follow the camera) and listen to clicks on that plane instead. That way you’ll get a position of intersection with that ground plane and will be able to place objects there (note - the plane doesn’t have to be visible, you’re free to hide it and it’ll still listen to intersections properly.)

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**Author:** ![drcmda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/91b2a8/32.png) [@drcmda](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/drcmda)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340/3 "2024-10-03T11:39:50Z")

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like mj said, nothing was clicked, how could it give you a 3d position. but you still have state.pointer.x/y which gives you the view coordinates.

other than that you can calculate a position, like in this demo [https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/gwthnh](https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/gwthnh)

```jsx
    vec.set(pointer.x, pointer.y, 0.5).unproject(camera)
    dir.copy(vec).sub(camera.position).normalize()
    vec.add(dir.multiplyScalar(camera.position.length()))

```

im not a mathematician, it might be wrong, but there will be an unproject involved somewhere so that alone will get you the answer on stackoverflow or here.

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**Author:** ![bralax](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.threejs.org/bralax/32/52343_2.png) [@bralax](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/bralax)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2024, 3:20am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/onpointermissed-click-location/72340/4 "2024-10-04T03:20:39Z")

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Yeah. I guess what I am looking for is not as much an exact 3D point as effectively the vector that was calculated from the mouse event to try to determine intersection. From that I could find the right position from the camera on the vector for my use case. I’m trying to avoid putting a very large mesh behind everything as there are some complications for my use case where I could run into issues determining how big is big enough and dealing with other use case specific environment issues.