Physics wheels?

[colmo]

I'm curious of how feasible it would be to do fully physical wheels i.e. instead of a static object with an animation, they are real rotating entities? Steering, rotation and suspension can be taken care of with other parts.

I've seen it done with robotics parts (Sasquatch has a few videos on YouTube, and there were others I can no longer find due to their age), though they of course handled oddly due to using makeshift parts, floppy suspensions made out of hinges, too much or too little grip, and infinite torque causing them to twist and break.

As for the pneumatic properties, something akin to the balloon landing systems (such as Chickenkeeper's) might do, as they have the ability to compress and rebound.

[coolitic]

Just stack some SAS models (preferably pretected by something) and keep rolling to have some make-shift wheels.

[Serratus]

That would be a good idea it the physics system wasn't crumbling already. Adding even more more collision and physics calculations before serious optimisation would break planetside exploration for many ppl. Including me for that matter. But if we do get optimized KSP then I'm all for it!

[colmo]

It's definitely one for the modders to try first, if any are interested?

If the physics did happen to work out reasonably well, there'd be some benefit to using tricks from real automotive engineering - suspension geometry and the like.

It's a direction the devs weren't really thinking of... But then we have biplanes, aircraft carriers, submersibles and airships at our disposal, thanks to mods.