Rovers not running quite straight.

[little square dot]

ok, time for a likely stupid question... why the heck would a physics engine use a system that can't handle larger numbers with a reasonable degree of accuracy?

[zarakon]

I remember someone posting a long time ago about a bug/"feature" in the game engine that makes everything unbalanced, regardless of how perfectly symmetrical you make it.

I think it had something to do with joint strength or stresses differing slightly depending on where in the part tree they were. When one side gets processed, it hasn't gotten to the other side yet, and when it gets to the other side, the existence of the first one changes things slightly. Normally it just creates tiny imbalances like rovers or planes tending to turn or roll slightly to one side, but he had come up with some extreme examples where one side or a plane appeared to be much heavier than than the other, even though it should have been symmetrical.

That was a long time ago though, so it may or may not still be applicable

[Xaiier]

Speed primarily, dealing with more precision takes longer and in most cases, its not necessary. KSP is a rare example where it becomes an issue, and even so krakensbane (floating origin) solves most of those problems.

[Vanamonde]

At normal time warp my rover does not turn east. AT ALL... Most of my trip is made under 3x and 4x time warp

Physics warp does things you wouldn't expect it to do, such as making vehicles behave as if they're heavier than they are. Experiment: have the vehicle parked with the brake on, and go into physics warp. You will see the structure sag as if it's getting heavier. And when it does, there's more of that misalignment of the wheels to the ground that I was describing earlier, and it might even (I don't know) magnify differences in traction between the two sides of the vehicle.

[Xaiier]

Physics warp does things you wouldn't expect it to do, such as making vehicles behave as if they're heavier than they are. Experiment: have the vehicle parked with the brake on, and go into physics warp. You will see the structure sag as if it's getting heavier. And when it does, there's more of that misalignment of the wheels to the ground that I was describing earlier, and it might even (I don't know) magnify differences in traction between the two sides of the vehicle.

Since I'm kind of the expert on this...hehe

Physics warp works by increasing the speed of calculation, but naturally to increase the calculation speed you have to give up something, unless you want your computer to melt. In this case, it gives up precision. Calculations are no longer done every .02 of a second, but rather .04 of a second, and so on for higher warps. What this means is that all the physics equations that are being calculated to define collision and structural support and motion only get updated half as often, so as a result theres less data points, and thus there can be large inaccuracy. The bendiness of objects is caused directly by the sluggishness of the data to update and thus you often get wildly wobbling and extremely pliable crafts.