Aircraft soft-body physics

[MOG_Hammer]

Originally Posted by stndbfrgrn

So sorry.

Still, taking your example of metal fragments hitting and damaging the pursuing aircraft or anyone in the vicinity, I think that would require a level of complexity in physics simulation quite higher than what is generally used for "games". Managing the behaviour of a departing aileron is another thing...

I don't know if it has been disclosed yet but since Rise of Flight uses an interesting damage model in which airframes bend and deform based on impact convincingly enough, this may hopefully be applied to BOS as well. Although I am ignorant and have no idea of how much it would take to bend a metal wing without snapping it away first.

Nowaday games uses a lot a soft physics (actually called cloth physics) to represent déformations in clothes and soft metal. I believe Havok engine can do that. nVidia Physx is surelly the better choice, since it is done on hardware, but requires to have an nVidia card with that specific capability (all nVidia cards since the 8800 GTS). Those with ATI would be out of luck.

So it is not just a simple matter of having physics in game, the main reason is that not all video cards can run physx, and not all CPUs are good for Havok. Developers must make some painfull decisions when building a game, and surelly physics is often the first to be shown the door.