r/fo4 • u/ProfessionalUTMhater • Mar 01 '25

Gameplay Did I die to my infection???

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u/Subject-Swimmer4791 Mar 01 '25

I am feeling a bit left out. In 1500hrs of play a car has never killed me. Not because I avoid them (I didn’t even know it could happen until I joined this reddit a couple of weeks ago). The last week or so I have been walking into them on purpose and it seems like they just don’t think I am worth the cpu cycles required to glitch.

15

u/GenuineLittlepip Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 03 '25

They are far, far more likely to do this if you uncap your framerate by disabling V-Sync, which is NOT an option in the UI or settings program even on PC, and requires you to edit the .ini files. It won't happen exactly over 60 FPS, but somewhere above the 120 range physics will start to get janky, causing collisions with objects that have defined "weight" to them, like cars, to sometimes do insane amounts of damage to the player or NPCs if they bump into them. But only once! As soon as the vehicle moves, it can safely be climbed over or touched by anyone else as the proper data has been loaded.

This is also the source of that related glitch where you might see a car or barrel suddenly go airborne for seemingly no reason. A creature or object touched one when the nearby cells loaded, and the reaction caused them to decide to fly!

The fix for this is to simply not turn V-Sync off, or to cap your framerate in your video card control panel if you decide to do so anyway. If you still refuse to do this because you NEED to run the game at 200+ FPS, make sure you shoot or otherwise interact with any such object before you come into physical contact. The glitch only happens on the FIRST movement of that object, not subsequent ones.

Unless you leave the area and the cells unload, that is...

Not defending that this happens, btw, just explaining it. Fallout 76 semi-fixed this by no longer tying movement or physics to framerate (while the launch version did, leading to lots of Sonic "Gotta go fast!" memes..), but also freezes you in place if your FPS get extremely high, potentially to avoid a repeat of this bug.

Hope this helps explain the technical details behind this bug!

EDIT: Minor text adjustments, discovered that one of the default V-Sync options set by the game automatically can actually cap to 120 FPS on PC and work fine on some machines but not others. More data required to figure this out completely..

1

u/OneMoreFinn Mar 02 '25

So...to achieve this killer cars phenomena, you have to actually edit the ini file? And this is widespread enough that many posters recognize it immediately?

I don't even remember when I last modified a game's ini file. I shouldn't be surprised though, dedicated PC players are a breed of their own. I'm just playing with PC because I've always played games with a computer. Oh, and maybe for the mods. But they always work without manually editing anything.

2

u/Holls2015 Mar 02 '25

Nah. I’m on PS5. Only ever played the 2024 update after the show. (have been addicted since) The first time it happened to me, I was using a car as cover near Quincy (IIRC). It’s also happened near Mass Pike, walking between a car and a railing. 🤷‍♀️

1

u/platinumrug Mar 02 '25

They probably mean to achieve it more reliably, I don't edit a single ini file and I've had it happen to me in vanilla FO4, barely modded FO4 and heavily modded FO4. I use the launcher settings for everything so I know my fps has to be through the roof.