Faster Than Light: One Man's Quest to Break the Speed of Light in Arma 3

Let me tell you how it all began.

So I was playing with the brilliant USAF mod, driving around some of their airframes while listening to my music. Eventually, I got bored of doing bombing runs with the B1, so I tried to climb as high as I could. Speeding up, I would see how far I went before stalling. This led to me playing with it in other forms: spawning an aircraft at 10,000m and crashing it into Altis for teh lulz.

Then I noticed that I went super fast.

So I tallied some more zeroes on. I couldn't see the ground. Be it from some sort of error or another, these planes could reach unfathomable speeds. I got to 25,000km/h falling straight down - I had no idea how high I was because the altimeter stops ticking up at 99,999m. Basically, I accelerated fast enough to go through that 99,999m - Almost 100 kilometers - in less than the blink of an eye. I know this because I suddenly went from above that 99,999m ceiling. straight to the ground: dying instantly without any indicator that I was below it.

Now, some people must think I'm pretty crazy, because my next thought was immediately: "Dude, what if I could break the speed of light?"

I talked it over with a friend who was online. We did terrible physics because I can't remember a lick of highschool physics class. I wanted to be scientific to calculate the distance that I'd cover while accelerating before realizing that I had no idea what my acceleration rate was. A constant, cool 200m/s^2? Doubtful. Was it exponential? Growing linearly? I had no idea. The altimeter stops at 99,999m and I couldn't use that to gather the distance to time ratio needed for acceleration calculation. Maybe later.

But for now, I launched the initial test with a shrug and a dedication to wing it. Sticking the newly christened FTL C130 at many, many meters over the island of Stratis (I determined that vanilla airframes actually abide by the laws of physics and hit terminal velocity after I did some science on an A134 Wipeout and discovered a 540km/h freefall terminal velocity after falling 4000m), I let her go. Turning off the engines

Here are some screens.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/562142740905340533/F3ACD1597C714B7AED7D2628C9180C82F1BB31E1/

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/562142740905298840/C950EDE84FC1613E49F1D9760BBDB8A0245EC1ED/

The skybox was weird. My instruments were white. Like, it was super weird.

Than I hit some sort of wall. My speed flashed red and white - stalling and going fine. I had no idea if I was still accelerating the same anymore of if I was changing (like decelerating.) I'm still unsure, actually, because the UI isn't actually large enough to show me all the digits and let me know if I'm approaching my goal.

This wall shook my plane around. It was pretty much seizure town. The pilot was hanging out outside the plane. It also made my instruments flicker white. I also moved from the center of Stratis to way, way, way outside the map. I don't know where I am anymore.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/562142740905288926/0F2CCC6CEE4D18F990B384B313D2C1273B3B2C5A/

Motion blur made it look like the fabric of the universe was collapsing on itself.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/562142740905348857/2DC18429113DC986B89737FEF584E2B95EBB6257/

I lost count of my speed. The skybox was still janky. Things were still shaking around. This FTL C130 might still be accelerating. I have no idea.

So these initial tests have proven that this may still be possible. However, the speed of light is 1.07925285×10^9km/h. That might be a long ways away.

I also might have to get my physics game on to see if I can scientifically discover things (like the time it'll take for FTL C130 to accelerate to the speed of light), instead of just flopping around above Stratis and hoping I'm right. But that's a lot of work.

I may have to do something about the UI to get more digits to see my total speed. Enlarge it? I'll work on that, too.

So basically, Arma can't really into physics. I am going to try my best... to break the speed of light and make Einstein cry.

I'll get back to you guys as further experiments manifest. Until then, feel free to gawk at the crazy dude trying to kill physics in a military simulator.

Enjoy!

You actually did it.

You crazy SOB.

:D

Awesome.

What's next, working particle accelerator in Arma?

Would beat the working hardrive in Minecraft..:p

That wall was probably the flight ceiling, after you hit a certain altitude in most games it begins pushing your vehicle back down below the flight ceiling so you cant clip through the skybox and out into the black void. The skybox isn't actually infinite, it has to end eventually, my guess is when the sky went nuts that was because you got yourself above the skybox (or extremely close to it, closer than you ever should've gotten normally).

That wall was probably the flight ceiling, after you hit a certain altitude in most games it begins pushing your vehicle back down below the flight ceiling so you cant clip through the skybox and out into the black void. The skybox isn't actually infinite, it has to end eventually, my guess is when the sky went nuts that was because you got yourself above the skybox (or extremely close to it, closer than you ever should've gotten normally).

I spawned at a super high altitude and nosedived from there so I don't think I went up through the skybox. I actually now think it was just me brushing against the end up the map (my GPS visible in the screenshots shows me way at the top, so I think that's where Arma's map ends and has an invisible wall.)

:)

I'm lazy, so tried simplier, via radio-activated trigger:

player setVelocity [0,300000,10];

At first try I've seen in 3rd view me, but low-poly, in default model position, then only Great Brightness and after that I had very low FPS till whole game restart. Every next try ended with "out of memory" crash, and before that something like this...

Anyway, seems, Arma 3's boundaries are unguarded and it's easy to crash the game.

You should try it with an SDV at 10,000m above the sea. It's fun ;)

I did this a few months back. I spawned in the wipeout at a ridiculous altitude by accident, said fuck it and then went -90°. I think I reached speeds of +300000km/h until I was down. The game completely freaked out like you described there.

Its amazing you can go in any direction in this game. I tried something similar last year and did a HALO Jump from near Space, started to nod off twice waiting to reach the ground before pulling ripcord.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." -Neil Armstrong

Lol

This reminds me of Big Rigs. Of course, it was a bit easier there.

Still, that's some achievement. I have a feeling we'll be seeing Take on the Milky Way soon if this continues.

You're winner!

Sorry had to.

Lol at you even mentioning big rigs, they should have marketed it like gmod, funny because of the top lel physics.

Made me chuckle..

Haha classic thread. So Im assuming if you surpass the speed of light in the game, you have actually surpassed the speed of light in our Universe as the game is part of our known Universe.

Wait you can't surpass the speed of your refresh rate, gg son :(,,,,,

Haha, not sure if that's true

Cue heated debate

This reminds me of Big Rigs. Of course, it was a bit easier there.

Still, that's some achievement. I have a feeling we'll be seeing Take on the Milky Way soon if this continues.

I think I'm getting motion sickness..

But yeah. He'll Take on Mars and land there ;)