Will wheels have buoyancy/water interaction?

Wilhelm shared this feedback ago

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Completely hypothetical question, will wheel have buoyancy? Could you build a 'rover' that could drive on land and have those wheels also contribute to the buoyancy of the grid if you drove it into water? I could imagine a rover with oversized wheels in relation to the total mass of the grid that 'should' be able to drive on land and also drive out into the future water.

In this case, how would the wheels interact with the water? Would they float (they should unless they're imagined as solid rubber, which???), would a turning wheel in said water provide some forward motion (albeit extremely slow) in the game engine (it should, but very inefficiently at maybe a few km/h).

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Replies (2)

Wilhelm ●

I know there are some ATV's and trucks that are stripped down and can drive on land or water in this manner.

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Herboren ●

A car doesn’t float because the weight of the car is greater than the buoyant force provided by the air in its tires. A single Small-grid light armor cube in game (0.5 m): 1 Steel Plate weights 33.1kg (or 72 lbs). Given the weight of other items, drivetrain, cockpit, shell, etc, it would never float. You're asking them to re-design the entire block system. The only for this to be possible is if they added DLC for buoyant objects.

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Wilhelm ●

Gee, these kind of look like rovers, don't they?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n5rCD-Es2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUZC61oyJyY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBZ4qOy8ORg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHKhocsHgmw

You can absolutely have oversized tires on a vehicle and provide enough buoyancy to float a small vehicle. Some of these like the SHERP their tires (combined) provide several thousands of pounds of buoyant force, which is more than enough for a simple buggy to float. Coupled with a watertight chassis, they should easily be able to run across the water (slowly).

I'm simply asking the basic question, is tire buoyancy going to factor into the water system design, since these are air filled and would provide a buoyant force to the vehicle. If not, then why, since physics says they do. Too hard to do? Meh, okay. I'm more pointing it out from the perspective of 'make sure you don't forget this dev buddies'.

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