I'm not sure if these are planned but they would certainly add a nice touch to this game and I'm just voicing my support & desire for these. Mud Runner does these nicely and and they'd fit this simulator very well. Even little things like making tires dusty when driving on dirt roads would be nice. The physics are awesome in this game. The visuals are a bit lacking.
The problem is the engine. The game is running on a rather ancient engine by todays standards, and adding support for rather engine specific things like MudRunners deformable mud would be quite difficult to implement.
I'd take any improvement. I understand deformable mud would be quite a large addition though much appreciated. I'd start with smaller things like dusty / muddy tires and off-road tire tracks where appropriate.
There has been speak of such things (no idea why I worded it that way, just roll with it) like the dust and dirt on vehicles... I believe that they planned on using texture splatting. They were planning the same kind of thing with scratches and what not... but it has been a long time since I have seen anyone talk about it, so I don't know where that stands. The original engine was old, but at this point the engine has been so rewritten that it hardly has any affiliation with Torque 3D any more. That was stated by the devs, not me. So if when it comes time for them to add feature A or B they pretty much have free reign over everything in the engine. Are there some things that still need worked out? Sure, sure, of course.... but you can be sure they are hard at work on those things already.