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.. _sample-programs:-chessboard:

Sample Programs: Chessboard
===========================

The Chessboard Sample Program

To run a sample program, you need to install Panda3D. If you're a Windows
user, you'll find the sample programs in your start menu. If you're a Linux
user, you'll find the sample programs in /usr/share/panda3d.

Screenshots

.. figure:: Screenshot-Sample-Programs-Chessboard.jpg
   :alt: Screenshot-Sample-Programs-Chessboard.jpg

Explanation

This sample program demonstrates how to use the mouse cursor interactively in
your panda world. It is sometimes desirable to be able to interact with
objects in a 3D scene via a mouse cursor. There are many solutions to this
problem and this tutorial will cover a popular method. The method used in this
tutorial will use collision detection to determine which objects the mouse
cursor is hovering over. By using collision rays and shooting them from the
lens (camera) with respect to the current position of the mouse cursor, we can
hit objects that are being covered by the cursor.

Note that there's a much faster way to achieve this, using the Plane class.
However, this sample demonstrates how it can be done using the Collision
system.

Back to the List of Sample Programs:

:ref:`sample-programs-in-the-distribution`