Tank Treads - Physic Simulation WIP

This is tank physic simulation. There's no track animation, everything is done with physics. I'm trying to create a realistic tank movement.

- Controls -
- W, A, S, D

- UPDATE 0.3
- Added breakable tank tracks
- Added two more wheels
- Physics tweaking

- Here is a new preview, you can drive the tank until the tracks break.

- Web Preview -
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20429633/Tank%20Simulation/Tank%20SIM%200.2/WebPlayer.html

- Screenshot 1 -


- Screenshot 2 -



Here are the project files, just unzip, load scene and hit play button. I would appreciate some feedback.

Download:
Tank Treads Simulation

 

Very cool! Would be neat to control with two throttle axis'

Also, I never noticed you could run a .unity3d by dragging it into a browser window. Learn something new every day =)

 

Looks interesting!
I will be following this t(h)read.

 

I gotta admit, that is really cool! Makes a nice change from the usual use of physics being barrels and ball traps on chains.

 

Sorry for a bad link, web preview link fixed. Yes, two axis controls is the next thing to simulate before creating a tank model.

 

it loks interesting. Do you share it ?

 

Ok, this is my first update of the project and the link for the new preview is on the top of this thread. Now you can steer the tank with WASD keys. I was thinking of creating a vehicle construction kit, the kit is going to contain cars, tractors, trucks, tanks, armored vehicles and some other stuff.

 

Thats a great idea i like it a lot.The game is really good !!!

 

Update 0.3, added breakable tracks, wheels and some tweaking. Preview is on the first tread.

 

Hey is that a tank or a paper boat? Those treads break like paper!

Fun stuff!

 

You are right, I made them a little bit weaker so when you try the preview they would actually break. Just try to drive the tank over the obstacles and back, you must drive it a little slower.

 

very nice project!
don't know if turning is really break a caterpillar but it's fun.
think of an explosion ...

 

Ye I imagined it, just a joke

 

I tried my hand at this, failed epically, and gave up... any tips?

 

WOW Digital, well done

 

Very cool Digital, is it fully physics simulated?

It looks like all the track sections are using joints, how are you handling traction?

Did you rig it up using Unity?

 

this is very cool, made me laugh!

 

Thanks for the comments, yes it's fully physics simulated and 80% of the job is done in Unity and the other 20% is done by scripting.

 

Bravo !!!
This is so good!
Its lot of fun.
When and how are we gonna be able to play with it (not just in web player) ?

 

Thanks for the comments, I started this project because I wanted to create a tank simulation, now this is going to be a vehicle simulator.

 

This is pretty cool.
I think that the treads break way to easily though, they slip a lot as well. Other than that its fantastic!

 

That was good start keep it up

 

Awesome, one feature I may tell you to add is to lock the cursor and make it invisible, then just program the "esc" button to allow you to move it again.

 

Any news please Digital.

 

That's rather cool, mate. Well done.

 

love the work, you get some awesome physic side effects which would be a nightmare to hard code (like loss of traction, wobbles and slipping)

The tracks break very easily though, maybe someway to limit the amount of movement across the wheels would help reduce this, as it's the twisting force that most easily damages chains.

How scalable do you think this approach would be? Could you have many tanks in one scene?

 

Thanks, there is nothing new for now but... I have reduced track breaking effect to a minimum so now the track should not even break. Number of tanks in the scene ??? This is going to be compensation between realistic behavior and performance.

 

Is there an updated webplayer with the stronger tracks available Digital?

 

Not for now, currently I'm working on some other vehicles.

 

Any news, Digital? Just had a play and it's fantastic. Would be great if the tracks are a little stronger so we can play with the handling a little more!

 

I also played around with something like this some time ago. Once all the joints are set it is pretty easy to script.
--Your current settings seem a bit too fragile to me.. --but if you don´t want ot create an action game it´s fine I guess..

Do you use WheelColliders for the wheels ? And how do you prevent that the chain rolls off the wheels ? With colliders or via scripting ?

 

Make the tracks stronger therefore a tank wouldn't end up having them slip away from just a few bumps. Other than that, It's awesome!

 

No news yet, I'm working on something else but... I have reduced track breaking to a minimum, there are no wheel colliders and I'm still testing tracks setup. Wheel colliders are the best for some racing games without obstacles, but if you open Unity's Car Tutorial and you put a obstacle in front of the car then you can see that this is not the best solution for some other type of racing/simulation game.



Now I'm trying to create an off road vehicle without wheel coliders..

 

Dual throttle would be great for Independent steering. How do you determine when the track should break?

 

Breaking is controlled with joint break force.

 

I tried alot to do this with out wheel colliders, but I couldn't.
I hope you find a way and let us now
Thanks...

 

Just use the WheelCollider..
It is really the best bet to get realistic behavior.

 

Hi digital,
first of all compliments for your work, well done, although treads break up too easily.

Anyway, the problem you are experiencing with wheel collider is due to the fact that wheel collider still uses raycast to check collision with the ground, not spherecast or capsule cast. So it finds only one collision point vertical respect of the wheel.
I worked a lot in order to fix this, and I developed a 3D tire algorithm, which finds all the contact points of the wheel, and I implemented it in my UnityCar package.
If you are curious, you can check it by clicking on the link in my signature.

 

Heheh. very cool.

 

about the wheel collider issue - it may be just as realistic to have a tyre collider just to prevent things like that. I used spheres. It works perfectly fine with wheel collider, but prevents the wheel from passing through things. It also helps bump the car up on obstacles.

 

Hi hippocoder,
do you mean that you used a sphere collider or a spherecast?

 

I want this physic in my tank

 

I see its been some time since you have given a update. Just curious if you have and further progression on the tank part of this yet? That would be extremely welcomed right about now

 

Ahhh..... I've forgot about that, I'll try to find this project and when I do I'll post a project download link so you can see how does it work. I don't have time to play around with this.

 

Even if its not a finished project I would really love to peak inside at the code and try to rework it to make my own tank game, which I haven't found much info about making the tracks actually move in a few days of searching. (Without being sent over to buy someone's 'package'...)

 

Again I'm really looking forward to your reply and hopefully you will have found the scripts by then..

 

Very impressive results. Keep it up mate!

 

Here are the project files, just unzip, load scene and hit play button. I would appreciate some feedback.

Download:
Tank Treads Simulation

 

Thanks for the project, i haven't had to much time to mess with it yet, but so far i have modified the tank.js script into 2 different script to control each track independently. Great job so far, my only problem I'm having is i cant seem to make the tank go faster. Like i said i haven't messed around to much yet. I now have the ability to do that thanks to you

 

Hmmm.. just tried to download the project files myself to take a look but unless Dropbox doesn't like my Asus TF300 tablet downloading files, the link is broken?