Hi everyone,
I want to start a simple discussion about some Unity physics systems and where they might be going in the future.
Cloth System
Some time ago, Unity asked for feedback about the Cloth System.
Most people said the same thing: it feels old and hard to use for modern games.
In my opinion, Unity Cloth as a tool is fine for simple, not very complex simulations. However, when it comes to more advanced use cases (like character clothing), it’s not as useful anymore. In my project, I use it for some flags. It’s simple and it works well, but again, for more complex projects that need more performant and accurate physics, I don’t think it helps that much.
Some time ago (around May 2025), Unity mentioned in a forum post that they had taken the community feedback on the Cloth System into account and that more details would be shared in the future. However, I haven’t seen any specific information about Unity Cloth on the Unite roadmap.
So I’m wondering:
- Are you planning to improve the current Cloth System, or make a new one?
- Will a future Cloth System be DOTS-based?
- Will performance be a main focus?
Vehicle physics
Another physics system that a lot of people have talked about on the forum is WheelCollider, used for car physics and different types of vehicles (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, etc.).
Just like Unity Cloth, for simple projects that are not very complex or very “realistic”, WheelCollider does a decent job. Again, same as Unity Cloth, in my project WheelCollider works and gets the job done, but I feel it could be better. I’ve seen much better solutions made by the community, both online and on the Asset Store, but I would really like to see something official coming from Unity.
WheelCollider has been in Unity for a very long time and, unfortunately, I haven’t seen much evolution. One very useful thing that does help a lot is the “Easy Suspension” package on GitHub. By the way, I wish this tool wasn’t so “hidden” (it’s not mentioned in the official documentation). In my opinion, it would be a good idea to integrate it directly into the engine by default. It’s a simple script, but it helped me a lot to set up wheel suspensions much faster 
In April 2025, Unity announced on the forum that the Unity Vehicles experimental package is now available.
From what I’ve seen, this package is built using DOTS, which I really like because it promises good performance. In my opinion, this package looks very good and I like the direction Unity is going in. I hope to see more and more improvements in the future.
The only problem right now is that it’s DOTS only, so it can’t be used with normal GameObjects.
A few questions here:
- When will this package fully replace WheelCollider and stop being experimental?
- With Unity 6.6 (ECS for All), will Vehicle Tools become directly compatible with normal GameObjects?
- Unity also lacks a Road System at the moment. In the future, will there be such a tool based on the Splines package, directly compatible with Terrain Tools (or the future World Building tools)? I made a forum post about this topic some time ago.
I’d like to hear what other developers think, and also any info from the Unity team if possible.
Thanks 