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

Clipping is caused by high velocity. If velocity was not abnormal there would be no clipping, so efforts are focused on preventing abnormal velocity as it avoids both problems. If you fix the clipping you still have the abnormal velocity problem so the gameplay is still broken. Kind of like how a plane breaks apart when it crashes. Making the plane stronger to survive the crash is pointless as the plane shouldn’t crash in the first place.