For nearly two decades, the random plane crashes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have puzzled players. Whether you were innocently walking down the streets of Los Santos or attempting a delicate speedrun, the sudden appearance and subsequent explosive crash of a small aircraft was always an entertaining, if sometimes aggravating, spectacle — and now, we finally know what caused them.
This insight comes courtesy of former Rockstar dev Obbe Vermeij, who worked on San Andreas as well as other classic GTA titles. He explained that the crashing planes were the result of several tricky technical challenges the team faced. The core issue stemmed from how the planes were spawned and their pathfinding implemented.
"Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path," Vermeij detailed on Twitter. "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."
This scanning shortcut occasionally allowed the planes to be spawned on a collision course, unaware of the impending doom ahead of them. Vermeij noted there were additional problems too, with planes sometimes losing altitude after spawning because their initial speed wasn't enough to generate proper lift. What's more, if map elements hadn't fully loaded in yet, the planes could find themselves flying straight into unseen obstacles.
"These issues would occasionally allow planes to be created on a doomed flightpath," Vermeij added. In fact, he even considered removing the plane flyby sequences entirely, recognizing the frustration they could cause players. Thankfully for fans (and the internet), the hilarious crashes remained in the game.
