vehicle physics

[adzling]

Ok I know it's been brought up before in various other threads but I thought it would be helpful to congeal them into a single location.

There are some really odd things happening with the physics model and vehicles right now.

Here are a few I've noticed:

1). Ramming. People are now starting to use the paladin vehicles to ram Thors and push them around.

This plainly wrong; a Thor must be like 5 times heavier than a Paladin.

2). Drop ships falling over, rolling down hills, flipping, getting pulled around by their reloading tethers, landing on top of vehicles, landing on top of buildings etc.

Again, obviously this is wrong. Looks plain silly when you've got a reloading drop ship stuck on top of your vehicle and you take it for a drive piggy-back style. Though it does make you damn near invulnerable.

3). Ground clipping.

I've had instances (especially on rugged maps like some of the ice ones) where my Thor (or other tracked vehicle) is trying to negotiate a pointy hill that merges with a shallow but steep "v" depression and the tank seems unable to determine which way the ground is going. It flips in the opposite direction from which it should and ends up on it's back! Perhaps in these instances (i.e. complex geometry that generates conflicting ground planes) it would be more realistic to have the vehicle just get stuck, requiring a pickup.

[yurch]

4) Track + Hill power slide.

It seems nonstatic (or, non 'rolling') friction doesn't degrade the performance of tracks (or wheels?) on inclines - you can slide down a hill while climbing up it at an angle - with a inpressive net gain in speed.

5) Steering directional shifts.

If you don't release a key before going in the opposite direction, the steering doesn't reset to center beforehand. For instance, if you turn left, release the left key, and turn right, the vehicle will turn right. If you hit right while still holding left, then release the left key - the vehicle will slowly go from a left turn to a right turn. Most noticeable and entirely reproduceable with hovercraft online and off, but all vehicles do so. This seems related to input rather than physics. I think steering should return to center a bit more gradually than it does now - hovercraft, for instance, can violently stop rotation on a dime.

6) Hermes disadvantage.

The hermes is supposed to be slower (than other paladins) because it is heavier. It seems this is actually handled in-game by reducing it's wheel horsepower, which may have some undesireable effects.

7) Wheel inertia.

I'm not sure what to call this, but you can cause a vehicle to change direction/rotation in mid air or upside down by violently moving the wheels about in different directions. While I'm sure this is possible in reality to some minor degree, you can actually right flipped shrikes and paladins using this with no wheel contact.

Edit: 8) Hovercraft are much slower on top of water than on land. Are they using ground effect for propulsion?

[ July 07, 2006, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[dan/california]

I have a much simpler request. I would dearly love two changes in the vehicle interface.

First, can we have a speedometer, PLEASE? I hate flipping vehicles because I have lost track of how fast I am going.

Second, can we gave some way to make the vehicle hold a constant speed with out holding the button? So that the player can concentrate on shooting for a few seconds with out coming to a full stop. It is completely realistic that stopping is unhealthy, but trying to bleep the throttle and shoot at the same time is a pain.

The weird effects from very bumpy ground mentioned above can be very irritating. Tanks flip over like they hit a 500lb IED.