One of the most interesting things about Rockstar's games, both new and old, is how many urban legends, myths, and unexplained phenomena get made up about them. Whether it's rumours about dead students in Bully (which was supported by heads being found in jars using cheat codes) or jump-scaring ghosts in GTA 5, there are a lot of mysteries surrounding Rockstar's releases.
Over the past few months, former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij (who worked as Rockstar North's technical director) has been explaining some of these secrets, including revealing why the moon changes sizes when it is shot and explaining why GTA 3's protagonist, Claude, is one of the series' few silent protagonists.
In GTA San Andreas, small planes are periodically created near the player to perform a fly-by.
— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) April 2, 2024
Sometimes they crash.
Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path.
It scans a number of lines in the forward direction of the plane. These scans are slow so I… pic.twitter.com/8uUQcmU958
It's already been interesting to see all these decades-long mysteries getting resolved, but it looks like Vermeij isn't done spilling the beans as he's explained another popular urban legend - the suicidal aeroplanes. Anyone who played GTA San Andreas growing up will likely remember that planes would often randomly crash into buildings around CJ seemingly without any rhyme or reason.
Although this one was clearly a glitch of some kind to do with how planes were spawned in the world, it caused some interesting myths about ghost pilots and added to the mystery surrounding the classic GTA games. Over on Twitter, Vermeij explained that there are several reason why this happens.
The first is that the game's code scans for obstacles in a plane's path, but that the scans detect the minimum number of lines in front of a plane, which can cause thin obstacles to not be detected. The planes could also lose height after being created due to their speed not being enough which, when combined with the fact that map models hadn't been streamed in yet and would load after the plane had been created, caused the planes to crash like they did.
"Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path. It scans a number of lines in the forward direction of the plane. These scans are slow so I used the absolute minimum. (Just the body and wingtips I believe) This is why thin obstacles are sometimes not detected."
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Source: https://www.thegamer.com/grand-theft-auto-gta-san-andreas-developer-explains-why-aircraft-randomly-crash-around-cj-suicidal-planes-urban-myth/
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