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Wheels are a constraint system.

This route turns Rapier's ray-cast vehicle controller into a small driving laboratory: the chassis is a dynamic rigid body, wheels raycast through suspension, and engine, steering, friction, and brake writes become measurable state.

Initializing Preparing renderer

Preparing the Rapier world, chassis, wheels, and vehicle controller...

physics: -
bodies: -
wheels: -
speed: -
steering: -
engine: -
brake: -
fps: -

Vehicle controlsidle chassis

drive wheels

high tire friction show Rapier colliders

Click a direction to toggle it; press the same button again to idle. Keyboard input mirrors the official WASD/arrow control path.

Vehicle controller contractofficial API boundary

await RapierPhysics()create gravity world

physics.addMesh(chassis, 10, ...)register dynamic chassis

world.createVehicleController(chassis)create ray-cast controller

vehicle.addWheel(...)define suspension ray

setWheelEngineForce(...)apply drive force

setWheelSteering(...)set steering angle

setWheelBrake(...)apply braking impulse

updateVehicle(dt)integrate vehicle forces

wheelSuspensionLength(...)sync visible wheel

new RapierHelper(world)inspect collider topology

The chassis remains a normal dynamic rigid body. The controller adds wheel raycasts and directly updates chassis velocity; wheel meshes are visual children whose suspension and rotation are read from controller telemetry.

Wheel telemetry0 / 4 contact

chassis position-

forward speed-

suspension-

wheel impulses-

Rapier is loading. Wheel contact, suspension, and impulse telemetry become available after the controller owns the chassis.

Based on the official Rapier vehicle-controller example and JavaScript ray-cast vehicle API. The CPU fallback preserves the interaction labels, but it does not claim suspension or wheel-contact parity.

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