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

all 3d modeling is based off of planes. everything ever rendered or gamesd on a pc is based off of polygons and triangles. they have a normal direction, that which points outwards and if you turn on a collider for that mesh it will detect the collission nebtween two colliders and prevent passage through, you can set up volumes (basically colliders you can pass through) that tell the collider that is moving that its not allowed to be in that area but fdundamentally there is no way to add thickness to a video game polygon