Currently Im working on a arcade racing game, which needs vehicle physics module. Available choices I have are, write module from scratch or use plugin from asset store. So I felt its worthy to discuss about this on forum and get your views on this.
If you guys think its better to write from scratch, then
Can you please suggest good tutorials related to vehicle dynamics
While I was doing rnd, found few people complaining about weird behaviour related to wheel friction curve and I feel this isnt documented properly. So should I go with unity wheel collider or write a new custom wheel collider (using other primitive colliders) so that I can have better control over this.
But If you guys feel, using plugins from asset store would be a better choice, then please suggest the plugin which suits best for following requirements
Should support any number of wheels except mono-wheel
Target platform for my game is mobile and web, so plugin should work well in these platforms.
Controls should be fun to play
Vehicle behaviour should have tweak-able parameters like gear ratio and engine-torque curve
If you decide to write your own vehicle physics from scratch, you can reference the Car Tutorial from Unity, which has C# code that doesn’t use Wheel Colliders. There’s also source code for a Wheel Collider that works very similar to the one provided by Unity.
If you use plugins from the Asset Store, I’d recommend either the Realistic Car Controller or Edy’s Vehicle Physics. Both are well documented, have source code and numerous tutorials, and work with multiple wheel and input configurations. Edy’s doesn’t yet support engine-torque curve or gear ratio configurations, but according to the author, will be implemented in the next version. I’d completely avoid UnityCar, which the author will eventually abandon in favor of his more expensive package. It lacks useful tutorials and documentation, and the author has been unresponsive to his customers, which he attributes to personal problems.
I have used both Edy’s and UnityCar. I familiarized myself with them both about 12 months ago. My preference was UnityCar. At the time, the developer was very helpful. But per cl.9’s comments above, sounds like this may have changed.
Be warned, you can get ok results quickly with the plugins or writing your own. But I have spent many many hours tweaking the behavior to get the behaviour the way I want it.
It is a frustrating process and complicated.
My advice, If you want semi-realistic behaviour, then start with one of the packages. A lot of the hard work if already done for you.
If you want a very arcade feel. like mario karts, then write your own.