Arcade Vehicle Physics

🏁  Problem & Goal

Unity's wheel colliders are a great starting point for simulating vehicle physics. However, just like in the real world this is a very complex topic. A lot of parameters depend on each other and are mostly understood only with profound knowledge, which makes it especially hard for designers to tweak them and to get an predictable outcome. For example just wanting to make a vehicle accelerate faster, you have to tweak torque which makes the wheel spin. The spin depends on tire friction. Friction depends on the spin speed of the wheel, which depends on the wheel radius, and the list goes on.

So the goal of this project is to simplify the vehicle system as much as possible, while still making it feel like you are driving a vehicle. That means:

  • Parameters are easy to understand for designers and dont have dependency between each other
  • Separate physics from the view model to gain complete artistic freedom


💡 Basis

The implementation of this project is based on the Rocket League talk, "It IS Rocket Science! The Physics of Rocket League Detailed" and the talk from Vicarious Visions "Supercharged! Vehicle Physics in Skylanders" from GDC.


🔧  Controls

  • W, S - Throttle, Break
  • A, D - Steer
  • Spacebar - Jump


Attributions
  • Race track models by Kenney under CC0 1.0
  • Car model by Azusa under CC BY 4.0


StatusPrototype
PlatformsHTML5
Authorlongogames
GenreRacing
Made withUnity
Tags3D, Physics

Comments

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is it opensource or we can see how's it set up?

i know someone that is doing a final paper and could find this very useful 

(1 edit)

it is not opensource, but feel free to ask me about specifics. Basically I implemented some of the concepts mentioned in the two talks I linked in the description.

thats very funny concept :D I like it! Just noticed that reverse driving rotation is working wrong. the wheel is turning correct but car goes wrong way

I'm glad you like it. Thats true, I did not put much thought going reverse yet as the main focus was the general physics and the driving behavior itself. Thank you for pointing it out, will be fixed on a next update.

This looks so cool. yet webgl is always janky for me and won't let me appreciate the whole thing. Any chance for a windows build?

Thank you! Yeah, I know webgl can be very janky and as this is an prototype I did not much testing. I play tested it on newest chrome and firefox though. It ran good on my end but much better on chrome.

>Any chance for a windows build?
Maybe in the future if I decide to work on it again. But not anytime soon, sorry.