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

…That’s a misconception because you are thinking the collision happens with the texture, however the texture itself is just a bunch of colored pixels, there are some exceptions like Noita where every pixel is simulated and terrain is “realistic”…

In most games however, the terrain is just a piece of texture that has something else, invisible under it that causes the collision.

Adding more thickness inside the collider box does nothing, because the collision is detected (and prevented) at the edges…

If you fall through terrain it’s not because the terrain was “thin”, it’s because the physics engine did something it wasn’t supposed to.

Adding something else underneath the terrain to catch you from falling wouldn’t really solve the issue, because the physics engine still broke… whether you fall through the terrain into void or into something under the ground doesn’t really change anything.

If you make sure the physics engine works properly you won’t have to fill up people’s resources with things that would prevent you from going in the void if the physics engine doesn’t work properly.