In reality the vehicle would be almost unrecognisable.
Maybe on impact, the vehicle model could disappear completely and be seamlessly replaced with the explosion and shattering debris & fragments, creating a realistic crash site on the ground.
This could also happen in the sky with direct hits from rockets and other highly destructive ammunition.
this would make a lot of sense. another option would to have the plane split into multiple items and fly in various directions. If im not mistaken, the PhysX part of the game engine can allow for very high quality destruction on all objects(seen a few demos on it, its pretty good)
yes it would... i dont know why they dont add this to the current buildings
its an available feature in all PhysX engines
https://developer.nvidia.com/apex
this should not be hard at all. like vryoffbtdrummr said, depending on the force of the impact/explosion, different levels of destruction should occur. if a helicopter gets hit by an HE MBT shell, do you want it to catch on fire and slowly fall to the ground? NO! The round should rip off whatever it hits, rotor blades should fly off, pieces of metal should rain down in flames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MQk1yvsoKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqFkbsnLa4w
There are some good videos. The planes practically crumple into nothing on impact.