Wheels are not in a good place but are a great start

Turretproblems shared this feedback 17 hours ago
Not Enough Votes

As an avid wheel enjoyer of >3k hours I have to say im very pleased with the return on spring and damper settings, however there are some glaring issues with wheels.

Wheels are missing critical components such as:

  • Friction settings
  • Max Steer Angle
  • Steer speed
  • Steer toggle
  • Propulsion toggle
  • Misc Hotbar settings present in SE1
  • Spacebar braking
  • Height override
  • Power setting


Wheels are going to remain borderline unusable in most cases due to these missing features, and there isnt one specific feature id rather have over any other in the above list, wheels are a system and need their entire all components to be viable. That said...

Things the wheels currently excel at:

  • Friction, if the default friction is the maximum they ever will be, im quite pleased with it.
  • Spring and damper settings. They cover a comfortable and useful range.
  • Physics responses feel tight and fast, the wheels feel properly 'real' and not nearly as mushy as SE1

Things wheels are not good at right now:

  • The decision to not have the low end of the suspension range peek beyond a distance equal to that of the wheel's radius means that at maximum compression the suspension will bottom out the vehicle, this in itself isnt an issue, but the fact the maximum is similarly limited it means that there is less ride height and suspension range than in SE1
  • Steering speed
  • Wheels currently arent hit by the paint tool, or block placement raycasts, meaning in creative its possible to hit behind wheels without even realizing it.
  • The maximum wheel size is 4x4 and not 5x5 like in SE1 even though SE2's terrain is capable of much greater variety on a micro scale, effectively limiting rovers as with the suspension range issues.
  • Certainly you guys have collision layers by now, its totally reasonable to have wheel colliders using spheres but in a physics sandbox the players and grids should not be colliding with that one, and instead should be colliding with a non-spinning cylindrical collider that matches the wheel's visually.
  • Wheel torque has a similar problem as in SE1 with the larger sizes, theres more room for more motor, I dont think anyone would mind if the wheels had more power at the cost of even more power consumption!

All in all wheels are not in a good spot right now, but they are at a great start. If the above fixes to wheels are implemented soon there will be very little reason to need to work on them again in the future.


PS, XL wheel sizes or 'lifted' suspension blocks that push the suspension midpoint further down, I beg of you.

Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file