Before a ramp, the car travels along the surface. After the edge, it spends some time in the air. The difference is obvious on screen, but the game has to carry it through movement, contact, body angle, and landing. Adding height to Smoke and Flame took more than lifting the road mesh above the ground.
The early 3D sample used a separate height calculation over the car’s flat movement. A 3D model showed the result, while the camera stayed fixed. This let the team test climbing, takeoff, and landing while keeping the existing control foundation.
The body and the image need the same road
If the image follows one height and collision follows another, the car starts hovering above the road or catching on invisible edges. The support and display therefore need a consistent description of the surface. The body tilts with the road, then continues into airborne motion after takeoff.
Jump distance depends on speed. The landing gives a visual response from the suspension. In the early sample, this was a limited arcade test; it didn’t claim fully independent travel for each wheel or a finished biome.
Cars can pass at different heights
A car has vertical dimensions. Two racers in the same spot on the track map don’t necessarily need to collide if one is higher than the other. When the practice section was added, the vertical ranges of cars and barriers were taken into account.
That doesn’t mean all combat immediately had finished rules for every change in elevation. Documents from that stage set separate boundaries for weapons, boost, and carrying over the other modes. A successful jump on a test section confirms that jump specifically.
A test road is still a test road
The sample had a short stretch of future road: a climb, a ramp, and a finish. It made the scenario repeatable without running a championship or changing permanent progression. Later, individual elements became part of the game’s broader path.
We like how height changes your sense of the car: near the edge, speed becomes visible not just in the scenery but in the trajectory ahead. But takeoff is only halfway through the task. The car still has to land properly, keep moving, avoid false collisions, and stay on a clear route. In retrospect, this stage marks the point when the road stopped being just a line of turns and began moving the car up and down.
