Going Ballistic: Arma 3's Bullet Physics Detailed In Video

Videogames are impossibly complex, and it's a miracle they work at all. Have you ever stopped to think about what a game like tactical shooter Arma 3 is doing, 30 times a second, every second? All those polygons it's drawing on screen, the bouncing of light off those polygons, the physics of every vehicle, the animation of every character, the artificial brains to bring those characters to life. And, of course, the guns and the bullets they fire, ripping through the world, arcing, losing momentum, draining health.

Arma 3's ballistics are more impressive than any game in the series, and this video from dslyecxi, leader of the ShackTac troop, shows why.

I was talking to comrade Philippa Warr at the weekend about the need for a games conference to sit between the arty independence of GameCity and Indiecade and the marketing bonanza of E3 and Gamescom. A conference for gamers which celebrates the art of mainstream games. This is the kind of thing I think would be there: games developers talking in nerdy detail about how they made their machinegun the best of all machineguns, or playful public spaces that reveal the unnoticed thought behind Dota 2's pitch.

Like, for reals. We spend hundreds of hours firing these things. Anything that takes them apart and reveals how they work is a great stepping stone towards understanding why it's fun. Also, this video might make you better at Arma, so, you know, win-win.

To try this for yourself in-game, download the script used.

Thanks, PCGamesN.