'Fallout 76' Players Have Found a Way to Run Super Fast

Fallout 76 players have already discovered a bug that lets them run much faster if they unlock their framerates and stare at the ground.

After just one day of the Fallout 76 beta being available for everyone, a returning bug has been spotted that's tied to the game's framerate settings. It seems that by unlocking framerates and simply looking downwards, players are able to move faster based on how high a PC's specs will allow the framerate to go.

Sharing evidence of what they referred to as a built-in "engine hack," a Redditor by the name of watto33 created a post to bring attention to the issue by saying "unlocking your FPS gives you speed hacks just like other Fallout/Elder Scrolls games." Another user provided proof within the comments with the video below showing the "speed hack" in action, an unlocked framerate resulting in the player crossing terrain much quicker than usual.

While staring down at the ground, the road zooms past the player as they moved over the environment to catch up with their teammate. It's not just an isolated incident either with a different player sharing the tweet below with another video that showed them looking down and moving at sprinting speeds. They look up occasionally to walk normally and show the difference between the two speeds, and the FPS number in the top-right corner that changes based on where the player is looking indicates a relationship between the two variables.

fallout 76's physics system is tied to it's framerate
including your walk speed

so you can literally outrun most enemies by looking at the ground//t.co/aYXiIJs6l7

— spooky skater (@teajayylmao) October 31, 2018

You'll also notice that in both of these videos, the players' Action Points aren't being used at all, so the speed shown is simply when they're walking, not even sprinting.

As the original Reddit poster pointed out, the framerate "speed hack" isn't exclusive to Fallout 76 with past Bethesda games like Fallout 4 featuring the same issue where the speed actions are performed at is connected to the framerate. While in other games the problem might've been humorous at best, frustrating at the most for PC players who wanted to obtain higher framerates without compromising the game's physics, it poses a much bigger problem in Fallout 76. If people can unlock their framerates on the PC to move quicker based on how high their framerates can go, it could potentially cause an imbalance in the PvP areas of the game. Those who have more powerful computers and can hit those higher framerates will have an advantage over those who can't and can outrun and outmaneuver those who don't albeit while looking at the ground.3

Fallout 76 is scheduled to release on November 14th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.