This was more of a tech-demo. I wanted to see how far I can get with real-time terrain deformation and mainly vehicles, similar to SNOWRUNNER.

Honestly, got furher than I expected. Per-texture “soil” configurations and physics materials to calculate deformation that take into account force applied, static & dynamic resistance to compaction (i.e. wheel spinning in place digging into the ground vs just standing on it), resistance curves to emulate soil getting compacted and becoming more solid etc etc. Combined with Edy’s Vehicle Physics Pro, the end result felt great.

Why did I stop? Because I got tired of fighting Unity’s out-dated Wheel Collider and it’s single point contact raycast instead of being a volumetric wheel collider. Even with Vehicle Physics Pro, its just lacking in an off-road scenario due to clipping and snapping. See: https://discussions.unity.com/t/my-top-three-physics-feature-requests/721805 by Edy for a detailed breakdown of the issue as he explains it better than I could.

I will probably turn this into a general Real-Time Terrain Deformation Tool at some point instead of focusing on vehicles though, at least until Unity updates their Wheel Collider.