Magical Instant Bullets

Do bullets actually fall at <i>exactly</i> the same speed if dropped or fired horizontally? In a vacuum, obviously they do. But my intuition says there would be some impact on the vertical air resistance from travelling 500m&#x2F;s in the horizontal direction. As the bullet pushes through the air, the air pressure above and below it is increased (you can actually see that in the photo in the post). So wouldn&#x27;t it effectively be falling through denser air than in the dropped case? Also, of course, it would be falling in a horizontal orientation, whereas the dropped bullet would probably realign itself to vertical.<p>Anyway, none of that invalidates the broader point, and the effects would be comparatively tiny even if present. Just found it interesting to consider.

No discussion of the history of ballistic trajectory simulation in video games is complete without including GORILLA.BAS

Really fun piece.<p>&gt; No computer game will ever have the level of sophistication to model shockwaves, fluid dynamic effects, spin9, the Coriolis effect, and the Magnus effect.<p>I&#x27;m no superfan, but who can forget the CoD4 &quot;escape from Chernobyl&#x2F;Prypyat&quot; sniper sequence?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;callofduty.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;One_Shot,_One_Kill&#x2F;Transcript#:~:text=At%20this%20distance%20you&#x27;ll%20also%20have%20to%20take%20the%20Coriolis%20Effect%20into%20account." rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;callofduty.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;One_Shot,_One_Kill&#x2F;Transc...</a>

people love to talk about a game being realistic or not realistic without asking whether more realism = more fun. Usually the answer is no. Doing collision detection on every bullet on every frame is a cost that may or may not be worth it, depending on the overall design of your game. &quot;Games take shortcuts&quot; is really flattening the discussion and acting like the game developers don&#x27;t know these things that the very smart blogger knows, when in reality, game developers know this stuff and make conscious design decisions. Most games are not designed to be scientific modeling programs, they&#x27;re entertainment products, governed by questions about entertainment value, not simulation accuracy. Plus in real life you&#x27;re not going to receive a network packet that says &quot;a bullet whose trajectory will hit you in the skull will reach you in 0.7 seconds&quot; and give cheaters enough time to auto-duck with a script. Even if you can afford to do collision detection on every bullet on every frame, there are many other reasons why it might not be a good idea. Hitscan is a design option, not something that&#x27;s &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;.

Easy solution: Laser gun, problem is now solved up to 100 miles away (0.54 milliseconds).<p>GPT says that &#x27;a car 100 miles away would be far too small to see clearly, even with the best sniper scope. It would likely ... not be visible at all due to the limitations of optics [25x to 35x] and atmospheric interference.&#x27;

I find the fact that bullets hit instantaneously and precisely way more fun!<p>In the article they say that parabolic math was not available in 1999 computer games, but the bio rifle seems to do it just fine, even at the time ;)<p>For the ones that want to have fun with the maths, this demo is awesome <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;shorts&#x2F;akEGxm5rcC4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;shorts&#x2F;akEGxm5rcC4</a><p>But this video also means, that you still aim at the player head when he is falling straight, you will just hit him a little lower than expected ;)

In-game sniper that you have to aim inches above the head is just not as fun, especially for an extremely fast-paced game like Unreal Tournament.

Funny thing is that Unreal had bullet like projectile weapons that don&#x27;t used hit scans. And many mods for the original Unreal Tournament had this kind of bullet projectile weapons. Of course, this projectile bullets travels straight and don&#x27;t try to mimic any real life physics effects, beyond to avoid the instant hit or miss mechanic.

The content was great but the looping animated gifs made actually reading the page nauseating.

&gt; Compared to the rest of the exotic UT arsenal, these seem unremarkable, boring even. They don’t fire bright bolts of plasma or glowing, exploding goo.<p>There is also the lightning gun. I recall using this on newer variants of facing worlds.

Author clearly never played any simulator games, like Arma. Or he wouldn&#x27;t ever posted this BS.<p>&quot;Games which use hitscan mechanics might be taking a shortcut, but it’s one for which can forgive them. The effects aren’t likely to affect realism too much, and we take these shortcuts in real life as well.&quot;<p>Hitscan is ok-ish for arcade brain-rot games like CoD, where max distance is few dozen meters, def. not OK for any other games.

Oh come on. This article is peak midwit &quot;ackshually.&quot;<p>Like all of the game&#x27;s weapons, how exactly the sniper rifle works is not described. The bullet&#x27;s diameter is not described. Its ballistic coefficient is, of course, not described. Most pointedly of all, the bullet&#x27;s velocity is not described.<p>There are <i>existing</i> guns that can fire projectiles at hypervelocities. These are mostly &quot;two-stage gas guns&quot; that utilize incompressible gasses to accelerate small metal projectiles for NASA experiments -- sometimes to velocities over 32000 feet per second. (10km&#x2F;s! Roughly 10-11x faster than conventional rifles, but a common velocity for micrometeoroids.) There&#x27;s absolutely nothing to suggest that similar mechanisms can&#x27;t be adapted to smaller arms; it&#x27;s impractical, but it&#x27;s an engineering problem, not magic.<p>There are other possible mechanisms, e.g. a conventional weapon with a magnetic rail that assists in the acceleration of the bullet. Science fiction? Sure. As is the game.<p>So, anyway, assume the UT gun fires a small iridium slug at 10km&#x2F;s and there&#x27;s nothing to complain about. Very fast bullets are very flat-shooting, as any .22-250 appreciator can corroborate.