Gaming News 20 years later, a GTA developer has to deal with this “annoying” bug
Rockstar’s former renowned technical director recently broke his silence on a long-standing mystery plaguing the GTA gaming community. His intervention on X piqued the interest of other enthusiasts, who in turn revealed previously unknown details.
On April 2nd, the GTA San Andreas gaming community was surprised by a resounding announcement. Vermeij, former technical director of the game, spoke on X to demystify the ongoing mystery of seemingly random plane crashes in the game. Obbe Vermeij is an icon in the GTA community for his key role in the development of Rockstar games from 1996 to 2000. After leaving the company, he published several articles on his personal blog detailing his experiences at the studio revealed. He currently also shares information about the production of the titles he has contributed to on his X account.
In GTA San Andreas, small planes periodically appear near the player to perform a hover. Sometimes they crash.
In GTA San Andreas, small aircraft are regularly placed near the player to conduct a flyby.
Sometimes they crash.Before I create the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path.
It scans a series of lines in the forward direction of the aircraft. These scans are slow, so… pic.twitter.com/8uUQcmU958— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) April 2, 2024
Vermeijs enlightenment
Vermeij provided details on how planes work in GTA San Andreas, which periodically appear near the player to perform a hover. Before its appearance, its code examined the flight path for possible obstacles, but this analysis only covered the main body of the craft and its ends, which could lead to erroneous trajectories. Sometimes they lost altitude when spawning because their initial speed was insufficient to generate lift or because of problems generating the game map. He admits that because of these problems he considered removing the aircraft flyovers altogether, but they were ultimately retained. After Vermeij’s detailed explanation, Silent, another modder and programmer well known to the GTA community, chimed in and added more details about this troubling bug in GTA San Andreas.
The myth of the plane crash
The revelations of Silent: the end of a legend
Silent pointed out that plane crashes were occurring more frequently than expected due to a problem with collision detection, an aspect of the development that even Vermeij had not fully foreseen. This simple revelation debunked the persistent myth that the number of accidents is linked to the luck of players. Vermeij clarified that this was in no way the case, ending years of speculation on the Internet. In fact, this bug causes crashes more often than expected, with planes appearing on blocked flight paths thinking the path is clear. The former Rockstar developer admits he was unaware of this for almost 20 years and acknowledges the embarrassment it causes. He also suggests that players use the fix suggested by Silent to resolve this situation.
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