Where to start for implementing vehicle physics? [closed]

Question

A little background for myself. I am relatively experienced with 3rd part physics engines such as Havok, Box2D, Bullet and have successfully integrated them in custom engine(s). I have also made a simple physics engine by following a few known books.

Now I am interested in diving into vehicle physics. There are a couple of books that skim over the topic but do not go over in enough detail for me to grasp anything useful. So I would like to know of good books/resources that are not too heavy (by that I mean a book that is pure vehicles and made for engineers rather than game developers) that help me get started on vehicle physics. Here get started = at least guide me through creating a simple vehicle in 3D with modern features found in most games (suspension/transmission etc.)

Note: I searched for a similar question but did not find one, but if one exists, please post the link and feel free to close the question.

Answer 1

This blog has four links (the third is broken), the first of which seems like an amazing resource, the others seem pretty great too. I'm probably going to read over this just for funsies, should be a good read.

You could take a look at the Rigs of Rods engine, it's an open source soft-body vehicule simulator, it may give you some insight into how it's done, but could be too complex for what you want to do. Also, reading though other people's code may not be what you want to do; nevertheless it could be inspiring.

Digital Rune gives some simple info on their implementation of car physics.

Answer 2

If you want to just get something reasonable going, I can't more heartily recommend the talk by the physics programmer on rallycross. (a shipped game on the PS1 back in 1997, so it's very quick on modern hardware and arguably implementable in higher-level languages that aren't as efficient at math as they could be).

Answer 3

I know this is an old question, but if I stumbled upon it so might others.

While it is a walkthrough for getting a car setup in the Unity3D engine, this tutorial goes through a lot of what is necessary and the concepts should be transferable enough.

http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/car-tutorial.html