Are wheeled vehicles usually controlled by force applied to wheels or is movement simulated by a force applied to the vehicle?

Question

I'm building a tank in my game and I was hoping to have moving wheels with rotation and shocks. I can get the wheels to bounce and rotate but they do not actually propel the car forward.

Should I not be trying to apply a force to the wheels and instead just show the wheel rotating as I apply a force to the body of the tank?

EDIT: ALRIGHT! I did it! I rigged the tank! But the question still remains, is vehicle movement with spinning wheels usually just an animation with a force applied to the car or is it not ridiculous to apply a force to the wheels?

Answer 1

It depends on the design of the game. And the time that you have to implement your simulation.

If you need a realistic simulation, you'll want to model the wheels, the engine, the weight, the feedback forces, etc. along with their interaction. This is more complex. And requires much more time to tweak all the parts.

If you're looking for a more simple looking simulation, you can simply use the rigid body for the whole vehicle and compute the wheels movement out of it. This is more simple.