Thanks for trying it out. Yeah. I've had plans for it.
Yeah, I felt camera distance could be a little too much, but I've had some issues with increasing rigidbody velocity. The way wheel colliders work is still not 100% clear to me, but I need some more time to get a better grasp. During tests, I've had way too much screen shake due to spring forces and all sorts of things happening, that's why I went with that decision, but I completely understand your complaint. It's 100% justified.
Hopefully, I will keep updating it. Fingers crossed.
Viewing post in Car Drift Game jam comments
I've been working on a car prototype myself and I've had more success not using colliders for the wheels at all.
I don't wanna link a video in a comment here but if you find "Space Dust Racing UE4 Arcade Vehicle Physics Tour" on youtube, that video was really enlightening to me on how to make simple car physics (in any engine), even if you want less arcadey feeling, I've found a lot of other tutorials that dug further into it but that basics laid out in the Space Dust video are solid and gave me a lot better understanding.
I've found the video you suggested, watched it, it's definitely enlightening as you mentioned. Thank you for sharing it. :)
I don't care about it being more arcadey or less. The idea behind remains the same. It's the coefficients that change to a given approach.
The box approach with starting point to the spring behavior is what I never considered starting with ever. Call it lack of experience with this topic, call it false intuition. I like the idea of immitation before replication.