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Real-Life Equivalents of Video Game Weapons

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-give-me-a-rocket-launcher dept.

antdude writes "This GamesRadar article compares a bunch of fantastic video game weapons and their real-life equivalents: 'There are certain things we just accept in video games. An overweight pipe technician can jump five times his own height. A first aid kit will instantly heal bullet wounds and replace lost blood. And any theoretical physics model can be cleanly packaged into a lightweight, handheld weapon with a minimum of fuss. But in certain cases, that last one isn't too far off the truth. As guano loopy as most game weaponry is, some of it definitely isn't implausible. In fact, some of it exists already. Kind of.'"

9 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. You can reload an M1 Garand mid-clip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Without having RTFA, I want to take this opportunity to point out that an M1 Garand (the semi-automatic infantry rifle of the U.S. military during World War II) can, in real life, be reloaded before the clip is empty. Many idiots who replicate the rifle in video games infer that, just because the clip automatically ejects when it is empty, it can only be ejected this way—that is, if you have one or two rounds left, you have to shoot them before you can take a chance to load a fresh clip. I don't know who got this wrong first, but it has turned into a pernicious meme that has reared its ugly head in every World War II shooter I have ever played.

    Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrXLtkY4wOw

    Game designers, please do more research than playing some other WW2 game for a few hours. Diligent fans, this is an issue worth making patches for. Besides being just plain wrong, this is a substantial and unwarranted disadvantage for what is supposed to be "the greatest implement of battle ever devised." And that's according to General Patton, who (speaking of memes) knows a little more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it!

  2. A railgun will certainly get the job done... by Genda · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Railguns are amazing things... You just have to be careful not to vaporize your projectile. It was calculated that if they could get a one ounce steel ball bearing up to a speed of 20 miles per second, it would cause a fusion reaction on impact with relatively stationery object. I was working in a large industrial machine in late the 70s, I was down in the power section of a massive ring roller. The thing occupied four stories, one above ground and three stories underground, at the very bottom floor was the power system. There were three huge copper bus bars that fed into a massive 2000 amp, 1760 volt three phase breaker switch. We were working electronic and hydraulic systems, and had the false floor pulled up, and some hydraulic mechanic dropped an 8 inch adjustable wrench across the bus bars. There was a mind numbing BOOM, accompanied by a blue green flash you could almost see through the back of your head, and when the dust and debris settled, there was a quarter inch of roasted wrench sticking out of the concrete ceiling. This place was noted for really exciting industrial accidents.

    1. Re:A railgun will certainly get the job done... by Genda · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know I've heard this from people before, and it always amazes me that they don't get it. All you had to do, is do a Google search on "railguns and fussion", there are plenty of articles about the experimentation using railguns as a viable means of ignition. Of course if you need a citation, see below. As for bits of space debris, hitting the atmosphere at speeds of up to 60 miles per second (see persied or leonid meteor showers), they ablate, slow down, vaporize. They absolutely do become plasma and some of the larger pieces (bolides) explode with kiloton force. Read about the early nuclear test ban problems involving accidental false positives, caused by small nuclear sized explosions coming from meteorites with sufficient mass and momentum to cause fusion explosions. That and a quick look at the fireballs created by Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter should put to rest and idea that meteors or comet can't cause a fusion reaction. The issue is simply one of velocity and momentum. A steel ball going 20 miles per second has both. Please be so good as the do the physics before making a knee-jerk assumption. Using E=1/2MV^2, I come up with a net kinetic energy of 14 million joules focused on a circular region less than an inch across. The entire collision takes place in less than a microsecond, and in that time the entire mass of the ball bearing is rendered into ionized plasma, as is a significant amount of the surface material of the target. The reason for raising incredible rare gases to hundreds of millions of degrees is to create an atomic velocity high enough to ensure that a signification number of collisions will occur in that rarefied gas to sustain a fusion reaction, fusion can occur at a much lower temperature. The incredibly hot dense soup of metal ions at the point of this impact are moving with incredible momentum, the material at the point of impact is hotter than the surface of the sun, hotter than lightening, fusion will certainly occur. Maybe not a huge amount, but some, and it will certainly make a very big mess of the target.

      H. Kolm, Electromagnetic Accelerator Concepts, DOE Impact Fusion Workshop, Los Alamos , N.M. (Jul. 10-12, 1979), Available from NTIS, Springfield, Va. pp. 206-217 (1979)

  3. I know it's old news, but... by interactive_civilian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...those Japanese robotic/cyborg exoskeletons are AWESOME! And, they are only going to get more awesome from here on out! Mjolnir armor, here we come!

    Even without the super-soldier aspect, the super-rescue-worker aspect is mind-boggling, not to mention the super-dock-worker. Alien queens better look out!

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
    1. Re:I know it's old news, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Great post... right up to the part about "bodies exploding" from being hit by .50 BMG. This fantasy used to focus on .223 (hit in the hand and the whole arm blew off; hit in the hand and the bullet ricocheted up the arm and pierced the heart, etc. ad nauseum).

      Don't get me wrong, the .50 BMG has *far* more kinetic energy than .223, .308, etc. But apply a bit of logic to what you wrote. "By the time you reach the .50 BMG, the round won't even know the body armor was there." True, it has extreme penetration. Think about that for a minute. However much armor it can penetrate, it can penetrate far more tissue or even bone. Still continuing the thought experiment note that it is not depositing much of its energy to do so. If it did, it would not continue to penetrate.

      Or, do a simple calculation for a perfectly elastic collision with a 75kg target and see how little it actually moves the target. Hollywood notwithstanding firearms don't knock people around and wouldn't even if they transferred all energy.

      I don't have citations handy, but in the 80s or early 90s one of the gun magazines ran a series on ballistics in tissue with *real* data, not pulling shit out of the ass. The *real* data doesn't support some common beliefs, such as the *real* effect of .45 ACP (which basically penetrates well with a shallow wound cavity around the wound channel). 7.62mm short has some interesting ballistics (double tumble, penetration path in tissue is not straight) that wouldn't normally come into play (it goes through too fast). I've got the magazines, just don't remember the name.

  4. FGMP15 FTW by mjwalshe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and the concept of a Jump Commado from traveller still the most OTT unit ever put on paper.

  5. What about Borderlands? by protodevilin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Say what you will about its Fallout-esque gameplay, Borderlands was the first FPS in a long time that constantly had me saying, "God I love this gun." A sniper rifle that fires explosive incindiary bullets? An SMG that shoots corrosive acid rounds? Grenades that teleport directly to their targets and burst into an electric lightning storm? Sign me up.

  6. Re:Screw guns from video games by sukotto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I want a Portal device

    --
    Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
  7. Re:Medipack by NewKidInTown · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I disagree. In the original Rainbow 6 games (even leading up to the most recent ones in Vegas) the characters in your squad could take at most a glancing shot and be harmed. Their effectiveness dropped remarkably. If they got hit again, or were unlucky enough to be hit critically, they were dead. Not revived-at-the-end-of-the-mission knocked out, but dead. Your explosives expert takes a sniper shot the the head in the first mission? You better learn how to dismantle bombs, because he's gone. The characters that only got scratched during the mission took a few "weeks" to heal ,meaning they were ineffective in the following missions. It made for a more tactics-based game, instead of "I'm gonna run into that room and spray bullets at anything the moves" type game.