Video games work thanks to an arcane power called programming. That’s something we all know, but sometimes we forget. Everything is written to work in a certain way, and even when it doesn’t, it’s also because of what it’s written. That’s why it’s surprising to hear people delving into the inner workings of any video game. Because they reveal things we didn’t know about the games. Even 20 years after their release.
Planes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have always behaved strangely. Particularly because many of them crash or explode in mid-air for no apparent reason. Something that has been a mystery to the community for years, debating whether it is intentional or not. Now Obber Vermeij, former developer at Rockstar Games, has clarified why these hilarious accidents occurred. And, of course, it was a programming problem.
According to Vermeij’s code, he created planes out of thin air in the sky when they were visible to the player, looking for obstacles before doing so. Because this scanning was slow, and we understand that it could compromise game performance, the absolute minimum was used to do it. This would explain why small objects are not detected, causing planes to ignore them. In addition, the plane could be generated without enough speed, causing it to fall much lower than it should, and the map would not load until after the plane had been generated, causing obstacles to appear after they could be detected. That explains the high number of air accidents in San Andreas.
But that’s not all. Because it turns out that, even if aviation problems were already many by themselves, a bug ended up finishing off the dramatic black hole that San Andreas represents for aeronautics. Because according to a modder named Silent, there is also a bug in the collision detection of airplanes. This bug causes a false positive, giving the plane the impression that there is no obstacle in front of it, when in reality there is. Something that further increases the chances of accidents. Which continue to occur, even in the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy version.
Does all this surprise us? The truth is, not really. How dangerous San Andreas is for airplanes has been a meme for 20 years. What’s interesting is discovering the reasons behind this and how a series of unforeseen problems has created this hilarious narrative of San Andreas as a kind of miniature Bermuda Triangle. Because in the end, even the greatest mysteries have a reasonable explanation if we look in the right place.
