Why do we still have clipping issues?

[Occulus]

I mean, really. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason for it- you're bashing away against whatever or whomever in your favorite DX9 game, and suddenly you see part of a model slice right through another model.

Why can't we have pieces of armor shattering off in battle? Why can't we have weapons that, oh, actually impact the enemy?

It's my understanding that the upcoming Elder Scolls game (Oblivion) has an impact-based combat system. I'm wondering if we'll be seeing clipping errors in that game as well.

But that just isn't true for many, many games out there, from the PC to the PS2 to the Xbox. It's annoying, and I'd really like to know why it seems so hard a problem to solve.

Anyone here have any explanation for this problem?

[Hatalles]

1. No explanation but I think we're getting there...

After HL2, I'm seeing more and more games looking into physics systems... Age of Empires III is one example of that -- and it's an RTS!