Why Soil Moisture Changes Animal Track Visibility

In standard game engines, soil is merely a 2D texture stretched over a heightmap polygon. However, from an agronomic standpoint, soil is a living, porous capillary system.

When atmospheric moisture levels drop, clay particles harden, drastically diminishing track depth and clarity. In SVIT, our goal is to model real soil resistance: after rain, a heavy Class 6 moose will leave deep, water-filled mud tracks, whereas in dry heat, tracking requires looking for bent blades of grass rather than mud imprints.