Racing game on uneven terrain

[fdssdfsdgfdgs]

I'm trying to create a racing game using BabylonJS (very similar to this: http://hexgl.bkcore.com/play/). The game track is an uneven mesh with walls. All the the physics collision examples I have seen use a plane for a ground surface, or a heightmap. I tried using Oimo.js, setting the track as a MeshImposter, and my racing vehicle as a BoxImposter. This isn't working at all... The BoxImposter collides with the MeshImposter way before they visually appear to touch. Is there a better way to do this?

Also, should I be using a physics engine for the vehicle movement itself? Or would it be better to handle its movement manually?

[Wingnut]

Hi Port25, welcome to the forum.  No replies, yet, eh?  Sorry.

The MeshImpostor is a CannonJS-only thing, and it only interacts with spheres, at this time.  So, you're a bit limited, in that scneario.  With your track being a meshImpostor, your racing vehicle must use sphereImpostor(s).  With a one-sphereImpostor vehicle, the realism would likely be somewhat weak, and you would probably need to set that sphereImpostor to .fixedRotation = true.

Another way... is using multiple sphereImpostors on the vehicle, connected together with tightly-constrained physics joints/links (joints/links - same thing). 

One thing to think about:  SphereImpostors have very little surface contact with any other impostors, so they are essentially friction-less.  Not good for mass-active wheeled vehicles with sideways inertia (during cornering).  If the sphereImpostor(s) is/are rolling upon the meshImpostor, they CAN work pretty nice.  But if they start skidding/sliding, it would be like ice.

Also, physics engines can get a bit "heavy" on the CPU performance, so racing speeds could be limited.  A non-physics engine approach would probably keep the speeds substantially better.

I'm not sure what the best approach is, here.  I'll keep thinking.  Perhaps others will have ideas, so stay tuned.