I have a little under a year, and I would like to make a car simulation. The main focus of the simulation would be to have accurate car collisions. The simple aspects of the simulation are already done (acceleration, turning, etc.), so I have mostly collisions left to do. I want to account for crumple zones, and accurate deformation of the car, as in a real car crash. I know this is going to be difficult, and require A LOT of research. My question is, is this possible / what are my chances of actually being successful? Any help is appreciated, -Dev578

It REALLY depends on your level of knowledge of structural integrities and the amount of information you're able to find on such vehicles and/or their construction. The more accurate you try to make it, the less chance you have of finishing it, however I think you can get a fairly accurate model done using some sort of underlying structure with impact ratings, then you can check the point of collision, check which part of the internal structure was hit, grab it's 'crunch' rating and then modify the body panels/windows as required. As long as you track which panels are attached to what other panels, etc it could be relatively realistic without to much impact to game speed (still going to be a good amount of impact upon collision, but you already know that).

There's a big question - do you want to

1. Simulate the car deformation using physics, as the main car simulation runs, or

2. Precalculate (not necessarily using physics) how the car deforms, and apply those deformations when you get appropriate collisions?

If it's for a game that you want to look realistic, I would go for option 2 - it involves less processing power and is safer - you know the result will always look good (or bad!). Option 1 is going to be computationally expensive, unpredictable (i.e. will probably look odd sometimes), and may have to be so simplified it won't even look realistic.

I would like to try to do it in real time because there is SO many things that can happen in a car collision. I do realize that it will be computationally expensive, but that is ok for this, it is going to be a simulation. I will give it a shot, and hopefully, in a little under a year, I'll have something to show for here on gamedev. Thank you for your replies.



-Dev578