Is "Realistic" Video Game Gravity Accurate? (Testing 15 Different Games)

Gravity in "realistic" games feels about right, but is it really? The answer surprised me, so it should surprise you too unless you know more about this stuff than I do.
Part 2: • The Strangeness of Vid...
Here is all the data I collected + a bit more: docs.google.co...
(I cannot 100% guarantee this data is perfectly accurate to the data I copied over from Excel)
Stick around till the end for a special announcement and an explanation for this being part 1 of 2 and not just a single video.
*Note*: I recorded the voice-over for this before considering margin of error, which means sometimes I say a number to a higher precision than is allowed by the error. This is a bit annoying but isn't too big of a deal. When in doubt, the number on screen is always the correct value. There were also a few times I later corrected a value, so I had to update the voice-over (using Google translate because I'm lazy).
The way I handled margin of error in post was to take a ± (plus/minus) for the time (which was two frames at 60 FPS usually) and a ± for the height of each fall. These values are combined into a single ± for the gravitational acceleration. For more info and the exact values for ± time and ± height, see the spreadsheet linked above.
Music used (in order of appearance):
Song - Artist/band/game
9-Bit Expedition - Dustforce OST
Graze The Roof - Plants vs. Zombies OST
The Prettiest Weed - Sword & Sworcery OST
Piccadilly Circus - Call of Duty: Moden Warfare OST
The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday Part 1 - CoD: Modern Warfare 2 OST
Intermission - 3Force
Venice Rooftops - Assassin's Creed 2 OST
Dust to Dust - Cod: Modern Warfare 3 OST
Solomon's Theme - Battlefield 3 OST
Wandering the Wastes - Fallout 3 OST
Power Core - Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon OST
Main Theme - Goat Simulator OST
Flying Music - Grand Theft Auto V OST
Snowy Mountains - Battlefield: Bad Company 2 OST
One Final Effort - Halo 3 OST
Menu Theme - Insurgency: Sandstorm
Of The Leper Butterflies - Ne Obliviscaris
Piano Sonata No. 11 III. Alla Turca - Mozart
Wake - Unfound
Bermuda Riviera - Atoma
Sources for videos/gameplay used (in order of appearance):
Channel - Video description - link
CuteStockFootage - Dust particles overlay - • Overlay With A Dust Pa...
The Interesting World - New York City time lapse - • Busy streets of New Yo...
schnooleheletteletto - Lemon muffin tower falling over - • Lemon muffin tower fal...
dProgrammer lopez - 2D Spacetime Curviture - • Curvature of Spacetime...
Best0fScience - Graviton visualization - • Photons, Gravitons & W...
ZackScottGames - New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe gameplay - • New Super Mario Bros U...
Paraline Games - Unreal Engine 4 Physics Simulation - • Unreal Engine Physics ...
MKIceAndFire - Breath of the Wild gameplay - • Video
AbdallahSmash026 - Mega Man 11 gameplay - • Mega Man 11 - FULL GAM...
Gaming Dog - Celeste gameplay - • Celeste - Chapter 3 B-...
temujin9000 - Metroid (NES) gameplay - • Metroid (NES) - Full Game
Zebra Gamer - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gameplay - • Super Smash Bros. Ulti...
WillyB - Far Cry 5 plane gameplay - • DESTROYING THE YES SIG...
Father - Hollow Knight gameplay - • Hollow Knight Part 1 -...
Gamer3471 - Blood splatter - • Blood Splatter on the ...
4K Relaxation Channel - Death Valley footage - • Death Valley National ...
BBC Earth - Ocean and fish footage - • Open Ocean: 10 Hours o...
Teton Gravity Research - Himalayas footage - • The Himalayas from 20,...
TelescopeFeed - Geoid of Earth - • Geoid Animation/Map of...
Wanderbots - SteamWorld Dig gameplay - • Let's Play SteamWorld ...
GEM ‘N’ I - Wind Tunnel - • iFLY Melbourne, Austra...
PBS Nova - Jupiter - www.pbs.org/vi...
Falkenauge - Fire from the left overlay - • Ghosts Intro Fire - Fr...
ENOCK MANDELA - Fire from below overlay - • Fire overlay
Zyrex90 - Far Cry 3 healing - • Far Cry 3 Healing Anim...
Its Gman - Partal 2 moon - • Portal 2 FINAL BOSS + ...

[@burritobowl0190]

HE USED THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL, THE MAD MAN

[@elijahgavin6706]

Burrito Bowl01 he didn’t even mention the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Fucking idiot.

[@chaser1735]

@@elijahgavin6706 LMAO

[@Jamman-hv3sx]

It’s about time

[@CubeValidus]

lmao, I have used it before when modeling lol

[@marmolejomartinezjoseemili9043]

yes I hate when people think these kinds of information are not useful and they just ignore it

[@uncomfortablyclose8481]

I never thought I’d hear the words “hipster” and “pythagorean theorem” in the same sentence about a video game.

[@George_Bland]

Should have done Minecraft the distance calculations would be easy

[@pgtd]

he probably did on part 2

[@0Synergy]

yea considering a block is 1m squared

[@George_Bland]

Uh why does this comment get more likes than my videos!

[@PartyCrasher04]

George Bland because no one watches your videos lol

[@0Synergy]

@A &Ω oof yea that one

[@over00lordunknown12]

Student: “We will never use this knowledge in life.” Teacher:

[@papabear6431]

over00lord Unknown and it was used in a videogame... who would have thought

[@Maxgamer-fd7hv]

That was the worst thing I have ever thought in my entire life. I wish schools in my region used a better way of teaching why the stuff taught to you is important than just saying "oh it's just important for some reason.".

[@papabear6431]

Max gamer 20 it's important to pass the test, then u can forget it.

[@Maxgamer-fd7hv]

@@papabear6431 Why would I want to forget it? The science and math taught in school is very important for me.

[@LetsCrashThisParade]

He got us good with this one daaaamn

[@IvosFortune]

the subtle humour in this is amazing “if the floor is not keeping you from falling rn, stop watching this video and get some help”

[@GENERICNICK-kj4lm]

Plasmuhh at 1:33 too

[@Healtsome]

Funny how incredibly unrealistic game has the most realistic gravity out of all listed here.

[@linkskywalker5417]

Reality can be quite unrealistic. Like how in the real world, there are supernatural elements

[@cypher_2259]

@@linkskywalker5417 hmmm, care to expand?

[@linkskywalker5417]

@@cypher_2259 Well, there is proof of paranormal spirits in some people's houses, as well as certain hotels. There's also proof that the great plague in Egypt did in fact, happen.

[@alunarnova]

@@linkskywalker5417 there has never been any proof of paranormal activity ever recorded.

[@thesauciestboss4039]

@@linkskywalker5417 no, that defies physics as we know it. Perhaps the movie Interstellar has it the closest, but we can't know for sure yet. What you see on TV is just made up. Stay off the History Channel, and the drugs

[@SpaceMissile]

Therapist: "6m Ezio isn't real, he can't hurt you." 6m Ezio:

[@wyld_wolfwin]

Oh god, he's coming. He's coming for me

[@teckzusferalupus5382]

That's one massive Ezio. Not very stealth for an assassin tho

[@natebit8130]

283

[@SmogHouseTradingCo]

The reason why gravity is larger than ours on earth is for a few reasons. 1. Jump heights are much higher in games. A normal human can't jump very high and would get stuck on terrain if justing using jumping. In games we increase that height but to mask it, we increase the fall speed so it feels like a similar jump to one we can make in the real world. 2. Since we have been making games for years and early games set jump heights to 1-2m, the gravity used to mask the jump heights has become expected. This is similar to movies and how we expect certain phenomena to behave like films we have seen rather than reality. this is why games with a more realistic jump height still have the higher gravity, you are expecting it. There are probably other reasons, like making falls more dramatic, or making the hangtime of a jumping arc appear much slower relative to the free fall.

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

Yes. Also i think most games reach the internal "terminal velocity" really quickly since a constant velocity makes calculations much easier, and players won't notice anyway sine most living people have any experience wit falling large heights except maybe for parachutes or bungee jumping. I'd expect a lot of games doesn't even calculate gravity acceleration and air resistance, it's probably just a predefined acceleration curve from stationary to terminal velocity.

[@gketchup777]

Humans can't jump high enough IRL? Yeah... kzbin.info/www/bejne/e3iVnH2NgKusfac

[@cowmoo5596]

@@gketchup777 Alright, now have them do that with the around 100 pounds of gear a soldier has to carry and well see how high they'll jump

[@JoshuaRFox]

@@gketchup777 except your legs remain rigid in a video game. A jump like that would be equivalent to jumping and then crouching, which is a more complex way of jumping than the average player is used to.

[@Bourikii2992]

Man in grade 3 our starting high jump was 65 cm. Most people can jump 1m.

[@BaumgratzE]

1:36 King Crimson just activated his ability

[@oskamah1935]

Eduardo Baumgratz who’s that

[@derp3044]

@@oskamah1935 jojo reference

[@derp3044]

@@oskamah1935 jojo

[@brokereigns]

golden wind

[@plumcakey]

KING CRIMSON

[@pixstixx9207]

Where are this man's subs?

[@noob_ukko2771]

@Christian Cooke he needs more

[@olivenicko2698]

weirdChamp indeed

[@avt5855]

@Christian Cooke grew 2k in a day

[@lizardflap251]

In the bathroom taking a real quick dump

[@feelsbadman1833]

Too far.

[@marcoling2173]

One thing I'd like to add is that from my experience, most video games seem to hit terminal velocity rather quickly. When you start to fall, you'd accelerate but only briefly, and you'll be falling at a constant speed. These varying results might be a result of the high acceleration low terminal velocity physics in place.

[@YellowBunny]

11:15 I have a feeling that drawing isn't quite to scale.

[@jimbo4333]

YellowBunny what makes you think that

[@TristanPopken]

@@jimbo4333 hehehe, if youre blind then please dont mind

[@Shadow-fb2ec]

Tristan Popken wooooosh

[@jimbo4333]

Angryshadow Gaming retract your shit No wooosh yet, except you

[@Ellemen_LMN]

Angryshadow Gaming Bruhhh

[@zat5176]

All jokes aside, this guy is a PHYSICS legend measuring all this

[@krispybacon9927]

Legend for using kinematics lmao

[@Saidriak]

Fun fact with portal: if you open the dev console you can just type "cl_showpos 1" and it will give you the velocity of your player, then just convert the hammer units meters :P

[@TheUKNutter]

Kazoo This also works with EVERY OTHER SOURCE GAME, such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and many others. You could even make your own map on Hammer to test the falling heights

[@russellwen1410]

As well as id Tech and maybe IW as well

[@timrattenbury4768]

Good old source engine

[@thesuperpunmaster6369]

It even applies to goldsrc games, as they use the same units

[@Henrix1998]

And sv_gravity tells the acceleration. 800 hu/s^2 which translates to 15.2m/s^2. That's roughly in the same ballpark as the games tested here

[@gregtheflyingwhale]

The most realistic thing is when you're fus-roh-daing a bear in ice off the cliff and he starts spinning randomly and eventually ends up on Mars

[@Raycevick]

This is exactly the type of geeky analysis I love, and on a subject that to be honest, I haven't really thought about. Looking forward to Part 2! And yes, I can very much relate to being a slow editor; just take your time.

[@SovernGaming]

Holy crap, thanks so much for saying something! You were one of a handful of gaming KZbinrs who inspired me to start a channel. Means a lot that you saw something of mine, and keep making great content!

[@Raycevick]

@@SovernGaming If this is what I'm inspiring, then I'm only more pleased. You too, keep up the great work!

[@erickane8163]

Fancy seeing you here stranger, can i get a hello ray?

[@yaboycyn]

This chain makes me happy

[@Isaacreeper]

Just saying that Spartans (and mister master chief) are 7 feet tall in their armor.

[@CaveyMoth]

And you have Master Chief in your pfp, so credibility is doubled.

[@Isaacreeper]

@@CaveyMoth lel yeaup

[@rustyshackleford9362]

He's right. The Chief is 7 feet tall. It's kinda common knowledge 😂

[@vhoang1029]

Imaging this is our homework, we would jump from the building to find out the answer.

[@sarowie]

this reminds me of a college test that asked to measure gravity with a stop watch and a thermometer. Do not search to far - you can simple drop the thermometer and measure its time to fall. (I mean: the test is kind of unfair as neither the thermometer nor the stop watch give a reference for height and if you would get a ruler, the thermometer would be redundant... and if I assume to know my own height, I can also assume that I can "drop" my self, again making the thermometer redundant...)

[@AnthonyBC93]

Thanks for speaking for everyone in the world

[@Kk-tu4xs]

The one time the Pythagorean theorem was actually used out of school

[@liamfoss294]

This vid got randomly reccomend to me and the quality was so good that I just assumed that this channel was like others with hundreds of thousands of subs - dunno how he doesn't have more

[@Komak57]

Game Physics to Note. First, a characters "collider" is usually a capsule, which usually wont start falling until it has completely left the building's collider. Some games reset gravitational draw to 0 when this happens so the fall itself matches real world physics, since you sometimes require 2G for the collider to "stick" to the terrain, which messes with falls when walking off ledges. This can result in you looking like you're walking down a stair before hovering, and then falling. Done poorly, this could look like walking on air, immediately accelerating a few frames, pausing, and then falling again. Jumps are usually much safer in this aspect. Second, almost every game has a "terminal velocity" when falling to avoid falling through terrain at high speeds low framerates, which would account for varying differences when calculating gravity from higher and higher distances. Some games also have a "death velocity" in which, upon reaching it, your character is marked for death no matter what happens, and gravity accelerates normally after that (Dark Souls has colliders that decide this instead of speed or fall distance).

[@Henrix1998]

That terminal velocity explanation is bonkers, modern games know how to do continuous physics and certainly DO NOT tie physics to framerate

[@BudgiePanic]

Henrix98 older games did though

[@willeupi]

Henrix98 I’m pretty sure that fallout 4’s engine was tied to the frame rate, which is why many people were having some weird glitches like items suddenly launching off when they went over 60 FPS

[@lolwutizit]

Henrix98 Modern games such as *looks at notes* Skyrim, Fallout 4, Dark Souls...

[@leonardsollaku1779]

jesus fucking christ m8

[@TheL0rd0fSpace]

"60 FPS is twice as accurate for measuring as 30 FPS" Clearly, the solution is to play these games on pc, and use 120+ FPS!

[@KuraIthys]

Sure. But only if your framerate is consistent. If it isn't, then you have to keep an exact log of frame times and work out what the rate was at any given moment during your fall...

[@makotoyuki345]

Maybe I want to keep watching this video whilst falling

[@Tronic-X1]

Bad door kun

[@Ring_nuts]

Nice Minato picture

[@LuciferMorningstar-ju3bw]

Weebs

[@Tronic-X1]

@@LuciferMorningstar-ju3bw shut the fuck up Lucifer headass

[@Ring_nuts]

@@LuciferMorningstar-ju3bw It's literally from a game in a series you might know called Persona.

[@oshotz]

holy shoot i just realized why using “9.8” as the force for gravity in my game is so big... it’s meters per SECOND, not per FRAME... i feel so dumb rn

[@aayushdas19]

Thought I'd take a break from studying for my physics exam.

[@maxon1672]

You literally have 3x the subscribers than you did two weeks ago announcing 10k. That’s amazing, nice work!

[@joshuaraymer1705]

I saw someone else point this out, but the gravity in Portal can actually be determined from the engine itself. Same with Fallout. In Portal, gravity is 600 HU/s^2, the difficulty then becomes in finding out how big a HU is. While the *maps* use 16 HU/foot, player models use a 12 HU/foot scale (fun fact, in TF2 alone it's 14 HU/foot for the players). This would make gravity somewhere between 11.43-15.24 m/s^2, depending on whether or not you consider the environmental or player scale to be more important. In Fallout's engine (which is the same engine used for all of Bethesda's games, meaning there's likely equal gravity among them) it's 64 units/yard. I cannot find any resources online for what the specific value in game is, but I know that you can get the exact value through a console command added by a plug-in (last source below). Then you'd just divide that by 64 and convert yards/second^2 to meters/second^2. Sources: developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Gravity geckwiki.com/index.php?title=Units geckwiki.com/index.php?title=GetLocalGravity

[@collinschiebel]

Him: The binoculars measured with an increased margin of error at lowers values His teammates: *all getting f**king RAILED but the other team* what the sh*t are you doing!?!?

[@TheOisannNetwork]

I studied Game development at University and we had a class about "faking it, so it looks realistic". We had an entire week about jumping physics. I don't remember much from it now, but I do remember we talked about it being because of early Mario games and how they made us think it looked normal.

[@SovernGaming]

FYI, I read every comment, and I just want everyone to know that your support (and even criticism) means a lot to me. I’d heart every comment I get, but that would kind of lessen the value of it, if you know what I mean.

[@omnibomni7661]

Have you considered putting tags on the video. It helps with the algorithm

[@SovernGaming]

I put tags on all my videos. You have to have a browser plug-in to see them

[@omnibomni7661]

@@SovernGaming I thought you didn't since sometimes I can see them without using a plug-in

[@Gef1ManArmy]

Bro if you need any help with the math or physics of this stuff hit me up and we'll see if my astrophysics degree will finally be relevant for something lol. Great work man keep it up (thumbs up emoji).

[@grzk]

You didnt seem to cover racing games like Hrand turismo of Project cars which because they're simulations, should be fairly accurate.

[@erickramer6306]

Imagine being in a match and one of your teammates just keeps climbing stuff, looking at the ground with binoculars, and jumping off

[@dscobeans]

1:36 lol

[@Arovna]

If you don't understand/OOTL please proceed to doing to your brain the number one technological advice given by tech support. It might function properly again. ... Alright if you didn't understand. Turned off. Yeah it was funny lol.

[@terellchapman8737]

HunterTheAndrew took me a long while to get it 😂

[@POOKISTAN]

@@Arovna Eh - That was actually a lot more dumb than clever, and not really funny. Anyone could do that 'joke' at any point in any video when they say 'off' and it would still be just as dumb...

[@Arovna]

@@POOKISTAN killjoy

[@RadicalShiba1917]

After he kills the street preacher, you can see he's still giving his sermon at 8:31 even in death

[@innsj6369]

I've got some information about Portal (which runs in the Source engine) that some of you might be interested in. There are technically two measurements of size; world dimensions and player dimensions in Portal. World geometry is upscaled. So a block that is 15cm on world scale is 20cm on player scale. Wanted to get this out of the way first so there is no confusion. I used player scale for my measurements. I will be talking about player scale from now on. Half life 2, Portal, GMod, these games all use a measurement system called Hammer Units (HU). According to the developer wiki, 1 Hammer Unit is 2.54cm, or 1 inch exactly. In order to see your position and velocity in HU and HU/second, you must go to settings, keyboard, advanced, and enable developer console. Press the key assigned to console ` by default, and type "cl_showpos 1". If you type in "sv_cheats 1", and then "host_timescale (number)" you can speed up and slow down time, which is handy. Host_timescale is set to 1 by default. I did some testing in Garry's Mod, and I admit the small possibility of some differences with Portal. Here are my results. The game has a parameter called sv_gravity. By default this is set to 600. I took some measurements and found that the default has an acceleration of 14.42 m/s^2, plus or minus 0.5. This is in line with the high gravities in other games. To set gravity to be realistic, you have to change sv_gravity to 408 (rounded). You can try this in game too, it feels really floaty. No wonder they made it artificially high. Anyways, thanks for reading my comment. I might have the measurements wrong but I wanted to share some of my knowledge of the Source engine because it might be helpful for others who want to do their own measurements. Edit: developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions edit 2: CORRECTION: I've realised that sv_gravity is measured in inches/second squared. Standard gravity on Earth would be sv_gravity 386

[@cophfe]

Since portal deals a lot more with falling physics for gameplay, I wouldn't really say that it's just a small possibility of differences between portal and gmod, especially since the source engine wasn't designed with specifically portals physics in mind. Either way good job

[@markmystery3536]

Really informative! Thanks

[@PennDraken]

Something common in games is that when jumping upwards, the force of gravity is less than during freefall, where it doubles. This is especially common in platformes (eg Super Mario Bros).

[@221Prohunter]

The amount of work that goes into these videos is crazy, you deserve way more subs. Hype for part 2!

[@rancidmarshmallow4468]

the results mostly make sense to me. most games will have high gravity but very low terminal velocities to emphasize smaller falls without making higher ones too ludicrously fast.

[@knight-mares]

For the portal one, the achievement notification is delayed, that's the error.

[@awesome7732]

you wont get that much of a difference from even a few seconds of delay+

[@foxxinrox]

uhhh no. The delay isn't nearly so big to allow that small a number. It's just that Source engine games like Portal and Counter Strike specifically have very high default air resistance values, so falling objects reach terminal velocity very very quickly. It's part of the reason why you can throw your guns off of Vertigo and Agency (CSGO maps on skyscrapers) before jumping off and still fall past your guns before you reach the death zone. Ciel hits terminal velocity well within at most 20 passes through close portals.

[@azazelleblack]

@@foxxinrox Chell. Ciel is the cute robot girl from Mega Man Zero. 👀

[@dixie_rekd9601]

@@foxxinrox not quite, the g in source games isnt insanely higher or lower than any other game but since the testing took so long and was averaged out over such a long time, the percentage of that time spent actually accelerating was a miniscule fraction. whilst the achievement test is a good test of overall terminal velocity, its a terrible test of acceleration due to gravity, since after only a few seconds you are at full speed and stop accelerating, dont forget "g" is only a measure of acceleration and has nothing to do with fall speed.

[@Zman44444]

1:37 I thought I had a stroke..

[@bzeffer]

1:27 Imagine the sigh of relief not having Jugg taken by the Cosmonaut

[@endlesnights3817]

In Halo 3 (and most Halo games) The sniper rifle is equipped with a range finder than you can use to measure distances and elevation when aiming at a target.

[@UnwovenSleeve]

Not sure why you had such a problem with portal, that should’ve been the easiest to measure. All source games map’s are made with “hammer editor” which uses “hammer units” these units can be roughly translated to metres. You could also probably find the gravity values online somewhere

[@AnthonyBC93]

He didn't know. Get over it

[@UnwovenSleeve]

Bazz 56 was trying to be helpful

[@Jiry_XD]

Yes bazz shhh hes helping

[@AnthonyBC93]

😂😂

[@huitlang931]

Its like a way more chill version of game theory, keep making em

[@the_hanged_clown]

1:36 weird cut of about 2 seconds here, what happened?

[@mr_hamburgalur1833]

hang da clown r/woosh

[@the_hanged_clown]

@@mr_hamburgalur1833 what happened there was a bunch of comments on this

[@reihanboo]

He's to lazy to explain the rest of the 3 force thing

[@the_hanged_clown]

@JGD who? what? I'm so confused

[@GENERICNICK-kj4lm]

hang da clown it’s a subtle joke

[@misterbuzz8778]

i know this is a really old video, but i just needed to sincerely say thank you. i was drowning with an essay i need to write on this topic and this saved me thank you so much.

[@fawful94]

I love how everyone is nerding out about measurements and distance in videogames. I feel at home.

[@lorenzocarr5784]

Can you imagine how pissed his teammates were to see him jumping off a building repeatedly for no reason.

[@zaryaka3661]

“After all the earth is perfectly spherical” Flat earthers: My Time Has Come..

[@agentp7295]

He said it's not perfectly spherical lol

[@jackmills5071]

@@agentp7295 right, it's an oblate disc

[@Zaknafein]

What a great video! I highly appreciate a scientific approach to questions like these concerning video games. You did a wonderful job explaining and investigating. My only minor quarrel is that at the end you spend a considerable time explaining why it is in two parts... as opposed to just having part two occupy those minutes, which when combining the two parts makes them overall shorter. Also 26 minutes is not that long (just ask Joseph Anderson). Keep up the good work!

[@lizardizzle]

14:30 Battlefield 4 is one of those games that will feel modern for another whole decade. I still play it religiously.

[@SovernGaming]

BF4 is my favorite multiplayer game this generation. Totally agree

[@awesomeguy2009]

I still play and enjoy Battlefield 4's MP from time to time.

[@urfork1]

I wish servers were still active. I can’t seem to find a game anymore sadly.

[@Preohhh]

Hey man, nice video! Very entertaining! I believe the reason why your Portal measurements were so off is because the game limits your velocity when going through a portal. Your velocity drops to 1000 hammer units whenever you go through one. The game is effectively slamming on the brakes every second. There's also a hard speed limit in the game, ~3500 h/u or so, that could probably be considered the "real" terminal velocity. Good stuff! Looking forward for part 2!

[@robertcone5368]

You are a gem m8. Need more subscribers

[@cesiupro123]

My theory is that in most games you don't have constant acceleration, or in other words, your fall speed doesn't increase linearly

[@triggerhurt]

fun fact, source engine games (like portal) actually do have real, functional ways of measuring distance by location, at least on PC. enable the developer console (options -> keyboard -> advanced), and run the command "cl_showpos 1", and your global position (at eye level) will be drawn on every frame in a corner of the screen. you can then compare numbers manually as you need. hammer units (the game's unit system) are traditionally designed to be 1/16th of a foot.

[@TheAdvertisement]

Mario: *sweats intensely*

[@HoonHoodie]

awesome vid my guy. im taking calc 2 and calc based physics right now and it's interesting to see some of the course material relating to video games physics. subbed for part 2!

[@xdazamx]

Probably the worse thing about this investigation is, as other comments allude to, the tricks that programmers use to put control and reliability over realistic simulation. Moreover, like real life, simple suvat equations don't cut it... You see, in batman there's a clear cutoff of the acceleration which I couldn't discern whether or not you incorporated that into your calculations. Much more complex and subjective to measure with a 60fps setup (but then how accurate do you really need to be? :) ). A good start however and an enjoyable video regardless. New sub!

[@azmonator]

I love all this analysis, along with all the uncertainties in your results! Awesome!

[@azmonator]

and nice Ulcerate shirt!

[@TheUKNutter]

12:07 Listen for the hidden secret

[@endornaut]

What does it say I can't make it out

[@TheUKNutter]

DrummerGamer “My leg!” - Spongebob reference.

[@ethanb6867]

As someone working with game physics engines quite a bit, using realistic values for gravitational acceleration always makes games feel floaty, unless it's a platformer, which sometimes needs even floatier gravity. Not sure why, exactly. Probably something to do with people not being used to falling from high heights and instinctively feeling like it should be more snappy.

[@troyroberts9076]

The one time some one was happy they where taught the Pathagorium theorem

[@SpikeTheSpiker]

Game dev here. We have gravity set to 2 (UE4 unit for gravity, whatever that means) because it feels better. No other reason, we also manipulate values all the time to make it feel satisfying.

[@ry_an.]

I havent heard of Medal of Honor: Airborne in years... jeez.

[@NexusHydra]

You've been blessed by the KZbin recommendations. Good video dude! 👍

[@Link-fu9bd]

When your science teacher plays games

[@solium3114]

Because Batman’s cape looks like it’s catching wind you’d think he’d fall slower

[@Zeekvo]

9:20 I mean none of this is really *necessary* but, it's interesting!

[@congruentcrib]

I’m glad to hear you got 10k subs... but it looks like you’re doing much better since then. But strange to hear someone who is content with where ever they are... really nice to hear. And honestly I loved the video so I’d sub, but that’s just another reason to sub to you

[@leaves6762]

"I recently reached 10,000" subscribers. Yeah don't think that will stop.

[@markus8197]

The effort that went into this one. Great video!

[@Zycthe]

7:10 bruh i am litterally re-playing assassins creed 2 right now whilst watching this xD

[@deus_ex_machina_]

Bit of a dry video, reminds me of the older Overlord Gaming videos where he'd basically narrate a spreadsheet, but I liked for the effort taken to produce an accurate research, indicated by the extensive description.

[@Zaz5y]

Deus Ex Machina Yeah and a lot of it was incorrect

[@LechuvPL]

You slow down your acceleration during higher falls so much because with jupiter-like gravity pulling it the atmosphere is so dense that the air resistance becomes enormous too.

[@Nagasakevideo]

There's a weird cut in the beginning when you're talking about how long we'd survive

[@Voxelize]

jeff jefferson that’s the joke

[@inthefade]

This is great. I was totally captivated when you cut it off. I'm also surprised that, despite some janky methodology, gravity is so consistently high across all games. My guess is that this is to compensate for being given extra high jumping abilities and speed? Or something like that. I'm very curious to see the next part.

[@TheOldBlackShuckyDog]

Tbf as much as I like the guy, game theorists ‘for honour’ video was absolute garbage lol. Happily though, can’t say that about this video, was a good watch!!

[@APeskyDunce]

Well, get ready to grow! Your content is great and I can’t wait to see more

[@typ0ds]

10k in 10 days?! Congratulations!!!

[@yuichikita6018]

I don't know if someone said this but I'll say it anyway. I beleave the reason of the "low gravity when you fall for a higher", it's because of the in game terminal velocity. In a lot of game, there's a maximum velocity where any object can't pass. This is set to prevent errors in collision or because simply it looks bad without it. Maybe, when in some games you fell for a large distance, the character reached the terminal velocity and messed up the calculation of gravity, giving a large margin of error.

[@crazybeast629]

I think the reason why values are so high is because when ur playing a game you'll notice that if you take 2 steps in-game you'll have walked like 2 meters and no one takes 1 meter long steps

[@Kojakesh99]

Problem of your measurement in Call of Duty was that you can't assume that a meter in that game is the same as a meter in real life. By plugging in an undefined unit into the equation you only get results relative to that unit

[@Buckshotyankee]

Congrats man, another 14 thousand subscribers in just a week!

[@Lithobraker]

Worth noting is that all Source engine games (Portal, Portal 2, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod, etc) have an inbuilt measurement unit- Hammer Units. These units have a canonical conversion to real units of measurement- 1 HU is 1/16 of a foot. That means that, if you could open any of these maps in Hammer, you could measure their heights and get a very accurate measurement. If this isn't something you can do yourself, I'm sure there's lots of people out there better-versed than me who could help. (I'm not touching Hammer with a 160-HU pole.) Edit: OH! Source also has a server variable which controls gravity. In HL2, Portal, Portal 2, and GMod, it's 600- and in all other games, it's 800. This value can be tweaked, so you could use that to get even more accurate measurements with different gravities. Gravity is defined as "HU/second squared". That means that real gravity would be about 386 in sv_gravity. At 600, gravity is 1.55x real gravity, and at 800, it's 2.07x.

[@atwitchyferret]

I think you forgot to factor in air resistance. Terminal velocity is a thing when air resistance and gravity cancel each other out making the acceleration to the ground a constant velocity. Objects reach terminal velocity faster when they have more surface area in contact with the oncoming air, which is why when jumping out of a plane, you can change your speed by changing your spacial orientation. I think a lot of the games have an acceleration until an object reaches a certain speed. As a reminder this only holds true for great heights or light objects.

[@Dprill95]

When you normally watch car videos, 26 mins is a breeze

[@kalenrobey947]

12:27 I love that Free Falling by Tom Petty was in there 😂😂

[@mfk12340]

So when I was in high school I did a similar thing to this but with minecraft instead. And I shot an hour horizontally to get the acceleration due to gravity on the arrow using orthogonal vectors method. If I remember correctly I got g = 10m/s, but for falling blocks like sand and I believe that the value was significantly higher. But it's just really kind of interesting. (I don't remember the actual values because this was years ago.)

[@magicalframe9441]

I've always thought about how wierd gravity is in games, especially "realistic" first person games. The conclusion I've drawn is that proper 9.8m/s² almost feels too slow when controlling characters on a screen And perfectly linear gravity acceleration maybe just doesnt work perfectly in a videogame context. I think developers instead tweak the gravity until they think "yeah that feels right"

[@kvdrr]

also that one time you got 16m/s^2 in ac2 was because the physics engine was not being used, it was just a baked animation

[@nightmarechameleon7502]

Can we appreciate the quality in this video, though? The editing, the research, the in depth analysis really shows quality.

[@ibchemvids]

This is great - I am a physics teacher in lockdown trying to make it through the year. I tried with Gmod - the acceleration is not constant (grrr) , but on a 10m jump g=9.7m/s/s - measured using 2 techniques. This will be my next lesson.

[@randallcromer66]

Damn dude now you got me wanting to see part 2 now. I never realized that gravity would be different in different game's. I can't hardly wait to see the conclusion.

[@techno_tuna]

A brief look through the comments didn't seem to mention this, but I would like to also bring up that in many games there is a sort of hang-time induced by a number of things. The pinnacle of a jump, leaving a vehicle, and walking off a ledge often have some level of hangtime. Even in very old games like doom, where you couldn't jump, you could clear sizable gaps by just running at them full tilt. This may play a hand in the varying strength of gravity, as this level of hangtime would matter MUCH less the further you are up. Also this is a nitpick but the measuring system used in fallout was flawed, if you already know Fawkes' stated height, you didn't need to make any further assumptions about the scaling of the building. You simply could have measured him compared to the wall, and then measured the rest of the structure in units of either the wall or in Fawkes's

[@jarrelljohnson7345]

I fell like I’m sitting in a math class watching different ways to use the pythagorean theory

[@wesley5729]

I heard once that animation is often faster than real life because character models are more simplified and the viewer needs less time to process each action. Not sure how much this applies to more realistic-looking games but it could explain why gravity is so strong in many video games.

[@pacoramon9468]

"Game Theory" is just data speculation. He always use the average size of something instead of doing in game measures.

[@KC2Lucky]

My guy really using high school physics for measuring games gravity. Good job mate

[@julians7268]

Awesome video! Glad this popped up in my feed.

[@roarroon1666]

At 9:38 you jumped, giving additional upward acceleration and increasing the time until the character touches the ground. Good video though!

[@Loddez]

This was a damn smart way to make me subscribe. This video showed up in recommend and I want to see part 2 now :[