I’ve learned that video game ‘clipping’ is caused by high velocity, thin colliders, and too-slow physics updates. Why are terrain surfaces in most 3D video games paper-thin? Why isn’t terrain given extra fill/thickness inside and under it to prevent ‘falling through the map into the void’?

Question

I could see why you might not want to fill under the terrain in a game that features things like underground caves, but thin terrain seems to be present in a huge majority of 3D games (even those without underground features) and is not engine-specific. Why is terrain almost always a fragile piece of origami that’s so easily punctured?

In: Technology

Answer 1

VG engines have no inherent concept of thickness. You have to program that in.

First off even if you do, that won’t change anything by itself. Remember you have to create all the physics rule from scratch. Imagine designing a universe and having to come up with concepts like quarks, the weak and strong nuclear forces, speed of light and gravity. That’s how you design game engines, obviously on a much more limited scale. Want thickness? Sure, but you have to program the whole physics around it and what it actually does.

Speaking of which, programming an engine means you want it to be as effective as possible, because computer resources are limited. So you use crutches like this, simplifications and have to expect sometimes things just glitch out because you can’t afford to use more precise or slower calculations.