I had a lot of fun exploring the rabbit holes that researching calibers in video games took me through, and I hope you all enjoy the video as well! Like always, thanks for watching and supporting Loadout so far. I look forward to reading everyone's thoughts in the comments, but you can nudge me directly on Twitter @IrregularDave if you want to chat there too. I hope we managed to do the details justice on this one...even if I had to spell "calibers" the American way....
To whom might we address a letter about this calibre spelling issue? All jokes aside, that live fire 6:53 demonstration is particularly satisfying- perhaps the savour of an occasion rare
Dave, have you noticed how *double tap* means different things in movies (confirming kills or "dead checking") and games (increased rate of fire)? There's even contention in reality about what a double tap is, maybe there should be a Loadout video about it 😏
The most common error I see in video games is having the same ammo type dealing more damage from a pistol than a SMG (they do it for balance, but it’s still weird if you know how they work in real life). Example: in RE4 pistols use one brand of 9mm (Red Hawk) while the TMP uses another 9mm (Jackal). But in the real world there’s isn’t a “pistol” or “smg” specific caliber, they should all be compatible. In RE4 they could have chosen a .380 acp SMG, it would explain the need for different ammo types and the reduced damage.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you could fudge it up to different barrel lengths. The longer the barrel, the higher the velocity between the same cartridge type. I know SMGs often don't have barrels much longer than that of handguns, but yeah.
@@marco8414 that's not what OP wrote. It's about a single 9mm round (eg) doing more damage in games when shot from a Pistol (shorter barrel) than from a SMG (longer barrel). That being said, i prefer the "being one tapped from across the map" type of games so i have to agree: it's weird.
I think a better comparison would be AR's and LMG's. The M4 and the M249 both fire 5.56 NATO but in a lot of games the M4 has more damage than the M249
Well their main issue was trying to directly compete with IGN, and we really don't need another IGN. So it's a good idea to change the direction to more typical "gaming blogger" rather than "gaming journalism".
I mean, gamespot is effectively sponsoring and advertising for The Royal Armouries with all of these-and gamespot gets content in return, so its not a bad deal. There may be other things going on as well such as donating a certain percentage of video profits back towards Royal Armouries as well for Johnathon's time.
Did you hear that the Human Cannonball was retiring from the circus? When asked if theyd replace him, the circus replied "No, its too difficult to find a man of that calibre"
I think this might be the best video made for Loadout, because it really did use the established format of the show (firearms expert, real-world vs. games) and used it to educate on the differences while also translating what that means for videogames.
Another weird thing that games do with calibers it’s making it a single type of ammunition for type of gun, like in Resident Evil games, where you have handgun ammo that fits all pistols, but SMG ammo it’s another type, even when it was supposed to be the same caliber.
Yes, it's cool when games follow ammo more realistically, so, say, a 9mm SMG is an upgrade of 9mm pistol but uses shared ammo, Doom used that for their machinegun (ignore it looking like minigun it acts like a rifle), or an auto or super-shotgun upgrading your normal one. Weirdly, Postal 1 had that but remake made auto-shotty use... same shells but green.
A loadout video on: "The curious case of 9mm" where you go over some of the ways different games portray the caliber family (x19, x18, x39, etc) and the difference that could be there might be a fun video Also get Johnathan to react to Receiver 1 and 2
Forgotten Weapons did a good primer on all the varied 9mm cartridges of lore. Covered Parabellum, .380 ACP, 9x23 Steyr, 9x23 Spanish Largo, Makarov, Dillan, and touched on 9mm Glisenti and 9x39. Ian McCollum and Johnathan are in a literal video "arms race" 😂
The strangest thing to me was finding out that the the VSS Vintoures wasn't actually in the same 9mm as the UMP9 which wasn't the same 9mm as the pp19 bizon.
@@yndsu Don't forget the 9x20, a round that most people have never heard of becuase it's pretty much obsolete and is used by just one not that well known gun made in 1903. Edit: Just for fun I'll add all the different 9 millimeter dimensions I have run into, I'll update this if I can be bothered. So theres 9x17, 9x18, 9x19, 9x20, 9x21, 9x23, 9x33, 9x39
To ad to those above there are at least 3 different ammos with market name 9x23 (steyer, largo, winchester) and also 38. ACP and 38. Super (same case) diameters are 9x23
An idea for a future episode might be to examine different hunting games and how they depict firearms? Two of the biggest ones are Call of the Wild, and The Way of the Hunter. Then, there are more arcade ones like Cabela's Big Hunt, series. They might seem like typical shooters, but you could analyze how these types of games depict the physics of projectiles and how things like wind, range, bullet drop and other factors compare to real life and other games? This might lead to a more general exploration of bullet physics and the ways different games get them right and wrong?
This series has proved popular. May I suggest some cross over series. Such as fighter pilots reviewing planes and space ships in video games. A professional race car driver reviewing cars, in not only racing games, but games like GTA.
7:21 Half of Mass times Velocity Squared when it comes to kinetic energy, hence why a speedy bullet is usually more destructive in terms of pure energy
That’s the measurement for Newtons. Joules is half mass in kg times velocity in m/s squared. The difference means a higher mass, lower velocity bullet and a lower mass, higher velocity bullet, even if they have the same kinetic energy out of one barrel, have the same muzzle velocity decrease percentage out of a shorter barrel, the faster bullet still features more kinetic energy than the heavier bullet. EDIT: OP fixed the post so this is more or less redundant, but feel free to read if you wish.
They're probably talking about momentum rather than kinetic energy. While both are related they are useful in different circumstances. One of which is collisions considering a bullet shouldn't just bounce off a target there won't be conservation of energy as the collision isn't perfectly elastic, but there will be conservation of momentum. This is the best reason I can come up with for using momentum rather than kinetic energy
You are still multiplying mass with velocity tho. It wasn't an exact mathematical statement, only that if you increase one of these values the more destruction you get...
I wish UA-cam and these videos were around when I was younger. As a kid, I thought that caliber was the power measurement (like joules), and that gauge was just how big around the shotgun cartridges were. So easy to be confused, because I still have a hard time understanding gauge.
Culture/geographic synonym, perhaps and nobody is gonna get fired in the UK for writing caliber, but if they have been educated in the UK, Australia, New Zealand etc and they wrote caliber instead of calibre in a professional context it would be at the least a subtle black mark against them for not understanding context. Yes, neither is ‘righter’ than the other but unless you are pandering to a US audience, as I believe this video is understandably doing (larger market, I assume - they’d know from their stats) you should really know the preferred form for the culture you are speaking to (note, I didn’t say right, I said preferred). When I was in the Australian army in the Cretaceous period, our logistics warrant officers would have been loudly withering if we used an Americanism like caliber - ‘that might be how you spell it with your little friends on call of duty, mate, but we write calibre here in The Strayan Army’. I paraphrase. That may have changed, but I doubt it. They still call the starter officer rank lef-tenant, not loo-tenant and I know from friends that this is still a thing. People can get understandably prickly at having their cultural quirks squashed by the dominant culture. I’m surprised they didn’t lean into it for this vid - they could have written caliber/calibre without too much effort, made a joke or quip about it and everyone would have been happy to have been included.
I would love to see a blunt and edged weapon version of this series comparing how video games talk about sabers vs long swords, what video games get wrong about daggers, and take downs on chain flails vs maces and all the more medieval classic arms type videos. Seems like an obvious next step 💜
It's kind of funny that in the muzzle loading black powder days a 50 caliber gun was usually considered a fairly small pistol. Or maybe more like "medium" than small but regardless kind of funny when it's seen as gigantic these days.
They also had much more crude manufacturing methods. Soldiers were issued blocks of lead and they were expected to mold their bullets over a campfire before the next battle because lead has such a low melting point. That's a lot easier to do with a half-inch ball.
@@SonicsniperV7 That's true, but I think there's another factor as well. Up until the last decades of "muzzle loading black powder days", all bullets were spherical. You didn't make a longer bullet if you wanted a heavier one, you just had to make it wider. That all changed with the Minié round, and similar types of bullets.
@@SonicsniperV7 less power but often devistates the target more. watch Garand thumbs video on flintlock rifles its really interesting to see its effect on a human
@@jeffbenton6183 It's possible to get high velocities with small calibers on a large charge of black powder and a long enough barrel, but heavy fouling is a problem, same factor that prevented the development of self-loading actions.
i love these videos that explain these real world concepts in relation to their video game analogues because it helps ground our understating of these concepts in reality and learn the clever tricks developers use to balance these things with fun and immersion
Fantastic video! I hope game devs are more aware. I remember back around 2008 I was alpha testing for the upcoming Wolfenstein 2009 at Raven Software & I was attempting to point out the differences in their gun animations before release and how it bothered someone like me. I let them know that when a gun is not fully emptied and you reload, you shouldn’t be racking the slide on your weapons because there would still be a round in the chamber. These little details in the game would make it more beloved and feel real, but they didn’t listen and of course the game went on to become another “flop” so to speak
I agree that little details like this make games better, but that Wolfenstein game had way more important issues than this that led to it being a flop.
@@FireMarshallStev Haha yeah, you are right. Going back like 12+ years later and finally playing through the game on PC recently, it is surreal seeing the finished product after seeing the game without textures in it's alpha state (sometimes I wish I could go back and play that old version, it was a wip but actually fun to see them try new things) I just remember listing small little details like that on my "feedback" sheet for them, but of course the only questions they asked us as a group was "how difficult was the last level for you? did you feel like it was unfair scale 1-10" kind of generic stuff.
Another 50 caliber not mentioned is 50 Beowulf, which you can get an AR chambered in. Even uses the same magazines, but instead of 30 rounds of 5.56, it holds 10 huge honker rounds 😅
I think something that'd be neat and help illustrate the difference between .50 BMG and .50 AE would be to show their effect on a block of ballistic gelatin side-by-side, which apparently nobody have done yet.
Gamespot....you're doing something right here with these in depth firearm videos. Please continue this and find more topics to discuss and explain, mainly because lots of gamers are very ignorant to firearms, ballistics, calibers, etc. Informing more players of the correct info is key, especially the long debated clip vs magazine argument....and yes they are two different things to those who don't know.
@7:20 I think that is a sweeping endorsement for exoskeletons/power armor from Jonathan Ferguson so we can all start carrying .50 BMG as NATO standard.
I actually really like Halo's take on ammunition. Their more simple weapons use a few rounds akin to those we use now, especially their take on 7.62x51mm. The rest are all a bit more substantial than our modern norms. 9.5x40mm for a standard rifle, 12.7x40mm for a standard handgun, and their anti-materiel rifles even use 14.5x114mm fin-stabilized sabot rounds. Their light and heavy machineguns range from the same 7.62x51mm rounds to their own equivalent of .50 BMG. There's also an interesting 5x23mm caseless rounds for an SMG. Someone really put a lot of thought into it, and I appreciate that attention to detail.
A small clarification - kinetic energy is .5(mass)(velocity)^2. This means that an increase in velocity will increase kinetic energy much more than a proportional increase in mass. Ballistics are much more complex than just kinetic energy of course, but this is a quick illustration of the importance of velocity.
I love that this channel is sharing knowledge with people who actually know how weapons work in real life to educate how devastating the weapons are in real life as gaming depicts the unreal stats of weapons
Deus Ex (2000) has a variety of cartridges: from 10 mm for both the pistol and the stealth pistol, to the 20 mm grenade rounds for the assault rifle. There are also two 12 gauge cartridge types: buckshot and sabot, though I dont know what the latter does to enemies. I’m a stealth runner.
7:05 you can see the hesitation as his fingers tremble before he fires that last .50 AE round. The first shot was fine, it's those follow ups that scare you.
Lovely to see more footage of Jonathan getting hands on with the collection, and I for one would love to see him just do that for a whole video; while talking us through each weapon and it's history/traits. I know, not exactly Gamespot content, but he could focus on the gaming relations of it, no?
I love how you said that in modern games "when have come a long way from picking up generic pistol or rifle ammo" then literally the next clip was from hunt showdown where you pick up generic long, medium or short ammo
For explanatory content, animation, and editing, this video may be the best explanation of the general topic of caliber on UA-cam, including all non-gaming content. Great work. Pardon the American spelling.
15:50 The flip is just for some flare but the rest of that reload animation I love so much. The miss on the first attempt to hook to the front quickly, so you slow down and take your time to line it up before committing to the snap in. I much rather these types of reloads in games over the perfect fast and smooth ones.
It's not a reload animation; it's an inspect animation. The reload animation in that game is much quicker and snappier which sort of neglects all the positives that you enjoyed, sadly.
I wanted to see the 50 BMG poked into the front of the Desert Eagle to comically illustrate the point, but I understand that's not something you'd do when handling firearms safely even with dud rounds and an empty gun.
You can find some people shooting a 50BMG out of a 12-gauge on youtube. They fit and will fire, but since the cartridge is necked, there's no gas seal so not much happens except a loud noise.
The reason 10mm was featured so much in Fallout is because back when Fallout 1 was being made 10mm was the hot new thing, with a lot of the gun world in the early 90's singing its praises as the caliber of the future.
I remember the 10mm variant of the MP5 being toted as the next best thing, then the UMP45 came along and stole its thunder and .45 in general seemed to take over in the pistol cartridge world.
10mm is a great cartridge, but it wasn't widely adopted because many shooters couldn't handle the recoil and because 9mm is cheaper to produce and train with. The FBI planned to adopt 10mm but the agents complained of the recoil. I carry and shoot my 9mm pistols more than my 10mm pistol but I do sometimes bring the 10mm for hiking and camping trips in bear country. A 10mm Glock with the right loading can take down bears and mountain lions with more power than a .357 Magnum and about 3/4 the power of a .44 Magnum, while using a reliable and familiar weapons system with a standard capacity 15 round magazine.
I clicked on this video in preparation to tear down a slew of bad information. I was pleasantly surprised and happy to be presented with a well made video. Good job Gamespot.
The spotter in me feels compelled to note that 7.62x54 is a rimmed cartridge and not rimless as shown near the beginning of the episode, it's even called 7.62x54"R" for "Rimmed" (or Russian, possibly wrongly). NATO 7.62x51 on the other hand is rimless.
3:48 lol, imagining one of the gun model programmers for the CoD vanguard project, being completely clueless about guns, goes home and trying practicing his gun knowledge just from the game he makes instead of going to the proper shooting range where he can be taught by instructors.
would be interesting to see more games use large caliber anti-materiel rifles as a tool rather than a weapon. for example, the Barrett .50cal was created for eliminating highly armored vehicles and is also used for bomb disposal
Into the radius is very nice with this, since its vr where you load each mag bullet by bullet, you get to experience every calliber as a different model, its very nice
Great video! Some thoughts from the dev perspective. Caliber is a balancing metric because it's easy for players to understand and compare numbers. We have to over-index on those numbers to balance across classes because the other, realistic differentiators of weapon types are either: -intangible/difficult to portray (why you'd want to clear a house with a short barrel weapon vs long, how a magazine of .338 Lapua costs 4x to empty what 7.62 does) -unpleasant/high friction player experiences (needing to set an LMG or Barrett rifle down to reload it, taking 30 seconds to reload a streetsweeper 12 gauge) -unfun/unfair/random(like depicted how wildly inaccurate most fully automatic weapons really are and that they don't draw the exact same pattern every time.)
"Hey I spent all this time setting up this camera track, so we'll use it for a bunch of shots." "Ok but there's going to be some variety?" ... "OK BUT THERE'S GOING TO BE SOME VARIETY?"
Syphon filter way back in the 90's emphasized cartridge size. The omega strain from 2004 had more gun options than any other game for a good long while.
Two guns that a lot of games get wrong are the P90 and the MP7. The 5.7x28 and 4.6x30 are body armor piercing rounds and are weaker against regular targets but they seem to do less damage against game body armor than rifles and more against regular targets in close quarters. Not a big thing at all, but its still interesting how much they change to fit game mechanics
The Escape from Pripyat pack for Stalker Anomaly did a nice job with this where different ammunition types are rated for defeating different levels of armour. It becomes a situation where someone complains that their shiny new toy isn't doing the damage that they expect it to, then when asked "what were you firing?" they'll just say "5.56, or 7.62x54" and then you need to ask them again, "hollow point, fmj, ap?" then they start complaining that it's all too complicated.
One game that nailed ammo variety was Fallout New Vegas. There was pretty wide variation between, say, the 5.56 pistol and 5.56 service rifle. However, you can load either of these guns with .223, 5.56 armor piercing, and more. Even the shotgun ammo included a wide range of types: buckshot, slug, bean bag, coin shot. Some ammo trades gun deterioration for damage broadly. Some are specialized for different types of targets. Putting a narrow choke in the hunting shotgun and loading it with slugs make it devastating at medium range, and this really amplifies the versatility of combat in the game. The inclusion of a reloading bench made this mechanic even better because you could reclaim cases, powder, and lead from a cartridge type then use those supplies to load AP, HP, +P, and other ammo types.
recoil is largely a function of the slide hitting the end of the guide. this makes the buffer really important in regards to recoil, matching the force of the slide. if the slide goes the full distance without hitting too hard then you have the least amount of recoil, as the force is spread across the time the slide moves. if the slide doesn't go the full length you might have jamming issues.
A 1911 is NOT a Colt 45. A Colt 45 is a revolver. "Colt 45" was first used in reference to the Colt Single Action Army revolver, aka Peacemaker, aka Model P, aka SAA, aka M1873.
The 1911 is made by Colt, and it's .45, so people call it a Colt 45. People have been calling it this pretty much since the day it was birthed in to the world.
12:27 Fallout has cartridges that are different from those in the real world, though not necessarily larger. For example, the Assault Rifle in Fallout used 5mm cartridges, which is smaller than any real world assault rifle caliber.
Would love to hear Jonathan talk about different ammo types of the same size like Tarkov. Grain and actual propellent material/ why they're different. I'm so glad the days of you picking up an enemy's AK ammo after magically removing it from gun and magazines and it fitting your M16 seem to be going away- it annoyed me all the time!
About certain guns and rifles referencing their cartridge type/caliber, the AT4 fires 84 mill, and A-T-4 sounds like "eighty-four", and the AT usually stands for anti-tank, which is one use of the AT4 if im not wrong
I loved the video, you did a very nice job explaining it. What some people in the comments don’t realize is the difference between actual ballistics and just having fun playing a game. Sure, realism in video games is desirable but, creators have to balance realism with gameplay. If you shoot a 5.56 round from a 16” barrel it will have way more velocity than the exact same round out of say a 3” barrel. Or the same round from a bolt action vs a gas operated semiautomatic. There are simply too many variables to accommodate without suffering playability with your standard platforms right now. Just enjoy the game and be glad that you aren’t really being shot at.
I'm glad you made a video about ammunition specifically. I think ammunition is ironically and weirdly the most overlooked thing about firearms when they are arguably the most important part of a gun. Without them a gun is just a club. Is a laser gun "cool" because it's a gun that shoots a laser or is it the laser that makes the gun "cool'? Would laser and plasma guns be half as "cool" if they shot normal bullets instead of lasers and plasma? Plus there's really cool and instresting experimental rounds that have been tested like telescoped ammo, caseless rounds, flechettes, trounds, smart grenades, and SCMITR.
Alright Gamespot, hear me out. You now have two amazing series on this channel, obviously, the Weapon Expert React, and this, the Loadout. You need a brand new series, and sadly, these two series are all just about Weapon, and revolve around Royal Armories. I suggest you make a series called "Game Revisited" where you guys went full journalist mode about games throughout the year. Recalling old games like Why Twisted Metal was so popular back in early 20s, Guitar Hero, any recent games too, etc. Make 12 minutes fun and informative videos ala Vox videos or Business Insiders about games.
I love being able to have gun knowledge explained to me by John Ferguson and not a USMC DI, months away from dying in a meat grinder I didn’t sign up for.
I'm only watching this because the Desert Eagle in Farcry5 uses the same ammo as the 50 cal rifle. I didn't realize it at first and was having a good time blowing away bears, but when I needed a rifle, all of the ammo was gone! I never even considered they would shoot the same bullet because that's ridiculous.
Video games like call of duty is the main reason the public has a real hard time understanding firearms. For a long time I knew some people that actually beloved the claymore has a red laser that detonates when someone walks by. The same concept comes with guns. It baffles me how a m4 has a weaker damage than a AUG even though both shoot the same cartridge. Now of course type of bullet, barrel length, velocity can change that. But not by a huge difference.
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is how games implement SMGs. what makes a sub machine gun a sub machine gun is the fact that it fires pistol rounds, meaning a handgun and a SMG pack the same firepower. Yet games always make handguns more powerful than SMGs, which at this point I’ve accepted as their way of balancing gameplay. But if a game is claiming to be all about realism, well it’s just something to consider.
Worth noting that there's yet another definition to "Caliber" - the length of the weapon's barrel as a multiple of it's diameter. For instance, a 120mm L/55 is a Rheinmetall smoothbore cannon with a barrel length 55 times it's diameter; that being 6600mm long. While less common terminology with small arms, you *could* describe a Barrett M107 a ".50cal, 58 caliber rifle" by dividing it's total barrel length of 737mm by 12.7mm (metric for .50cal)... Now, of course we don't do that, but in naval guns, artillery, and armoured vehicle weapons where distinctions of "Carbine" and "Marksmen" don't exist - but different barrel lengths still do - it's a much more useful way to differentiate them.
I find it funny how in some games,such as in GTA 5 Online,the AK and the G36 use the same "assault rifle ammo",and the Beretta 92, the 1911, the Desert Eagle and even the Colt 1851 revolver all use the same "pistol ammo". I get why they do it,it wouldn't be as fun if you had to buy several different types of ammo for each handgun or each rifle,but it's still kinda weird how going to the gun store to buy ammo for your Beretta automatically gives you ammo for every other handgun you have,regardless of what cartridge they're chambered in (and vice versa,shooting your Beretta lowers the ammount of ammo you have for other handguns).
I had a lot of fun exploring the rabbit holes that researching calibers in video games took me through, and I hope you all enjoy the video as well!
Like always, thanks for watching and supporting Loadout so far. I look forward to reading everyone's thoughts in the comments, but you can nudge me directly on Twitter @IrregularDave if you want to chat there too.
I hope we managed to do the details justice on this one...even if I had to spell "calibers" the American way....
To whom might we address a letter about this calibre spelling issue? All jokes aside, that live fire 6:53 demonstration is particularly satisfying- perhaps the savour of an occasion rare
@@TheSundayShooter believe me, it hurt to write it that way too haha
Dave, have you noticed how *double tap* means different things in movies (confirming kills or "dead checking") and games (increased rate of fire)? There's even contention in reality about what a double tap is, maybe there should be a Loadout video about it 😏
Nominate this man for the gundies!
@@fourleaf7570 When I used to dabble in Practical Pistol shooting, a double tap was firing two shots in quick succession at a given target.
The most common error I see in video games is having the same ammo type dealing more damage from a pistol than a SMG (they do it for balance, but it’s still weird if you know how they work in real life).
Example: in RE4 pistols use one brand of 9mm (Red Hawk) while the TMP uses another 9mm (Jackal). But in the real world there’s isn’t a “pistol” or “smg” specific caliber, they should all be compatible. In RE4 they could have chosen a .380 acp SMG, it would explain the need for different ammo types and the reduced damage.
I agree but I think getting one tapped from anywhere across the map in any game isn’t everyone’s cup of tea 🤷♀️
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you could fudge it up to different barrel lengths. The longer the barrel, the higher the velocity between the same cartridge type. I know SMGs often don't have barrels much longer than that of handguns, but yeah.
@@marco8414 that's not what OP wrote. It's about a single 9mm round (eg) doing more damage in games when shot from a Pistol (shorter barrel) than from a SMG (longer barrel). That being said, i prefer the "being one tapped from across the map" type of games so i have to agree: it's weird.
@@kingweez2611 i don't see the correlation
I think a better comparison would be AR's and LMG's. The M4 and the M249 both fire 5.56 NATO but in a lot of games the M4 has more damage than the M249
I love how GameSpot slowly became a gun channel, and Im 100% here for it lol.
Well their main issue was trying to directly compete with IGN, and we really don't need another IGN. So it's a good idea to change the direction to more typical "gaming blogger" rather than "gaming journalism".
It's where I've gotten basically all my gun knowledge
I’m proud of all the content we make as a team, but I am also glad I get to share my specific interests of guns + games with folk too!
Just wait until UA-cam catches up and starts treating Gamespot like they do all the other gun channels by suppressing them.
@@IrregularDave Dave! :D
I'm convinced by now this dude is an employee of Gamespot.
@@thexrrival519 this guy and johnathan are the goats of this channel
@@thexrrival519 based and royalarmouriespilled
Gamespot the biggest sponsor of Royal Armories and I don't even think that's a meme. The British government is stringy af
I mean, gamespot is effectively sponsoring and advertising for The Royal Armouries with all of these-and gamespot gets content in return, so its not a bad deal. There may be other things going on as well such as donating a certain percentage of video profits back towards Royal Armouries as well for Johnathon's time.
at this point Johnathan Ferguson is becoming the Ian McCollum of game guns.
Did you hear that the Human Cannonball was retiring from the circus?
When asked if theyd replace him, the circus replied "No, its too difficult to find a man of that calibre"
Literally lol.
Booo!
Take the thumbs up. I'm going home
I think this might be the best video made for Loadout, because it really did use the established format of the show (firearms expert, real-world vs. games) and used it to educate on the differences while also translating what that means for videogames.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for your kind words!
Another weird thing that games do with calibers it’s making it a single type of ammunition for type of gun, like in Resident Evil games, where you have handgun ammo that fits all pistols, but SMG ammo it’s another type, even when it was supposed to be the same caliber.
And especially when it is EXACLTY the same ammo.
In some cases they are the same..
Yes, it's cool when games follow ammo more realistically, so, say, a 9mm SMG is an upgrade of 9mm pistol but uses shared ammo, Doom used that for their machinegun (ignore it looking like minigun it acts like a rifle), or an auto or super-shotgun upgrading your normal one. Weirdly, Postal 1 had that but remake made auto-shotty use... same shells but green.
This channel combines all the best parts of being a firearm nerd/goon, and a gamer.
For real
Haha I’ll take it!
Me n the buddies that I gamed with used to have a running joke about people fighting wars with the same logic people use in shooter games.
More gamers should be guns rights advocates ✊
@@DevonReclaimed More people with an actual concept of freedom should also.
A loadout video on:
"The curious case of 9mm" where you go over some of the ways different games portray the caliber family (x19, x18, x39, etc) and the difference that could be there might be a fun video
Also get Johnathan to react to Receiver 1 and 2
Forgotten Weapons did a good primer on all the varied 9mm cartridges of lore. Covered Parabellum, .380 ACP, 9x23 Steyr, 9x23 Spanish Largo, Makarov, Dillan, and touched on 9mm Glisenti and 9x39. Ian McCollum and Johnathan are in a literal video "arms race" 😂
@@jcameronferguson Can I get a link? 🧐
@@jcameronferguson Any Relation to Jonathan Ferguson? ツ
@@TheSundayShooter I have a two-year-old nephew named Johnathan Ferguson, but no, not related to our dear Royal Armorer
I remember Zach Hazard blacking out on gun knowledge while MikeBurnFire is angry about having way too many catridges in 9mm caliber, making it vague.
The strangest thing to me was finding out that the the VSS Vintoures wasn't actually in the same 9mm as the UMP9 which wasn't the same 9mm as the pp19 bizon.
The classic case of 9x19, 9x18, and 9x39. Lets also not forget the Russian 9x21, which is yet another different cartridge type.
@@yndsu Don't forget the 9x20, a round that most people have never heard of becuase it's pretty much obsolete and is used by just one not that well known gun made in 1903.
Edit: Just for fun I'll add all the different 9 millimeter dimensions I have run into, I'll update this if I can be bothered. So theres 9x17, 9x18, 9x19, 9x20, 9x21, 9x23, 9x33, 9x39
@@hullukana214 also dont forget the 9x21
To ad to those above there are at least 3 different ammos with market name 9x23 (steyer, largo, winchester) and also 38. ACP and 38. Super (same case) diameters are 9x23
@@xD-hu4fc Do you mean 9×21 IWI?
Love how this channel has essentially become a firearms channel.
An idea for a future episode might be to examine different hunting games and how they depict firearms? Two of the biggest ones are Call of the Wild, and The Way of the Hunter. Then, there are more arcade ones like Cabela's Big Hunt, series. They might seem like typical shooters, but you could analyze how these types of games depict the physics of projectiles and how things like wind, range, bullet drop and other factors compare to real life and other games? This might lead to a more general exploration of bullet physics and the ways different games get them right and wrong?
Ehh idk
Ohhh yes this would be very interesting!
Honestly I would still call Call of the Wild quite Arcadey but that may be biased.
There’s no way a channel of this size would make a video just for the 12 total people that play hunting games
@@nitemare20000 bro they literally examine splatoon. I think hunting game are feasible.
Another thing about caliber is artillery, it also states the length of the gun, for instance 16"/50 is 16" in diameter and 50*16" long.
just like many Tank guns. german 75mm cannons went from L12 to L72, meaning the barrel went from 12*75mm length to 72*75mm length,
This series has proved popular. May I suggest some cross over series. Such as fighter pilots reviewing planes and space ships in video games. A professional race car driver reviewing cars, in not only racing games, but games like GTA.
This is Jonathan Ferguson - The savior of GameSpot channel
Only one H in Jonathan
Didn't save from rimless 7.62x54 caliber!
7:21 Half of Mass times Velocity Squared when it comes to kinetic energy, hence why a speedy bullet is usually more destructive in terms of pure energy
That’s the measurement for Newtons.
Joules is half mass in kg times velocity in m/s squared. The difference means a higher mass, lower velocity bullet and a lower mass, higher velocity bullet, even if they have the same kinetic energy out of one barrel, have the same muzzle velocity decrease percentage out of a shorter barrel, the faster bullet still features more kinetic energy than the heavier bullet.
EDIT: OP fixed the post so this is more or less redundant, but feel free to read if you wish.
They're probably talking about momentum rather than kinetic energy. While both are related they are useful in different circumstances. One of which is collisions considering a bullet shouldn't just bounce off a target there won't be conservation of energy as the collision isn't perfectly elastic, but there will be conservation of momentum. This is the best reason I can come up with for using momentum rather than kinetic energy
@@guillaumeleveille5023 stopping power
You are still multiplying mass with velocity tho. It wasn't an exact mathematical statement, only that if you increase one of these values the more destruction you get...
@@guillaumeleveille5023 momentum is irrelevant when it comes to bullets. Maybe for recoil, but not killing.
I wish UA-cam and these videos were around when I was younger. As a kid, I thought that caliber was the power measurement (like joules), and that gauge was just how big around the shotgun cartridges were. So easy to be confused, because I still have a hard time understanding gauge.
fun fact: caliber and calibre are interchangable spellings for the same word like color vs colour
You would expect it 1:01 to be spelled _calibre_ as Jonathan Ferguson, David Jewitt, and Adam Mason are all Englishmen
@@TheSundayShooter in this context it is almost always spelled this way so with their interest/knowledge in guns it may just come more naturally
Culture/geographic synonym, perhaps and nobody is gonna get fired in the UK for writing caliber, but if they have been educated in the UK, Australia, New Zealand etc and they wrote caliber instead of calibre in a professional context it would be at the least a subtle black mark against them for not understanding context. Yes, neither is ‘righter’ than the other but unless you are pandering to a US audience, as I believe this video is understandably doing (larger market, I assume - they’d know from their stats) you should really know the preferred form for the culture you are speaking to (note, I didn’t say right, I said preferred). When I was in the Australian army in the Cretaceous period, our logistics warrant officers would have been loudly withering if we used an Americanism like caliber - ‘that might be how you spell it with your little friends on call of duty, mate, but we write calibre here in The Strayan Army’. I paraphrase. That may have changed, but I doubt it. They still call the starter officer rank lef-tenant, not loo-tenant and I know from friends that this is still a thing.
People can get understandably prickly at having their cultural quirks squashed by the dominant culture.
I’m surprised they didn’t lean into it for this vid - they could have written caliber/calibre without too much effort, made a joke or quip about it and everyone would have been happy to have been included.
I thought calibre was how spanish or french people say it
@@JMS849 Many loan words in English are owed to the French and the Latin tongue
I would love to see a blunt and edged weapon version of this series comparing how video games talk about sabers vs long swords, what video games get wrong about daggers, and take downs on chain flails vs maces and all the more medieval classic arms type videos. Seems like an obvious next step 💜
The CoD4 and BF cuts brought back some great memories.
It's kind of funny that in the muzzle loading black powder days a 50 caliber gun was usually considered a fairly small pistol. Or maybe more like "medium" than small but regardless kind of funny when it's seen as gigantic these days.
Black powder has much less power than modern smokeless powder, so they had to compensate with larger projectiles
They also had much more crude manufacturing methods. Soldiers were issued blocks of lead and they were expected to mold their bullets over a campfire before the next battle because lead has such a low melting point. That's a lot easier to do with a half-inch ball.
@@SonicsniperV7 That's true, but I think there's another factor as well. Up until the last decades of "muzzle loading black powder days", all bullets were spherical. You didn't make a longer bullet if you wanted a heavier one, you just had to make it wider. That all changed with the Minié round, and similar types of bullets.
@@SonicsniperV7 less power but often devistates the target more. watch Garand thumbs video on flintlock rifles its really interesting to see its effect on a human
@@jeffbenton6183 It's possible to get high velocities with small calibers on a large charge of black powder and a long enough barrel, but heavy fouling is a problem, same factor that prevented the development of self-loading actions.
Always a pleasure to see Jonathan Ferguson making an appearance
i love these videos that explain these real world concepts in relation to their video game analogues because it helps ground our understating of these concepts in reality and learn the clever tricks developers use to balance these things with fun and immersion
Fantastic video! I hope game devs are more aware.
I remember back around 2008 I was alpha testing for the upcoming Wolfenstein 2009 at Raven Software & I was attempting to point out the differences in their gun animations before release and how it bothered someone like me.
I let them know that when a gun is not fully emptied and you reload, you shouldn’t be racking the slide on your weapons because there would still be a round in the chamber.
These little details in the game would make it more beloved and feel real, but they didn’t listen and of course the game went on to become another “flop” so to speak
Doing a full reload when you still have a round in the chamber has always been a pet peeve of mine in video games
I agree that little details like this make games better, but that Wolfenstein game had way more important issues than this that led to it being a flop.
@@FireMarshallStev Haha yeah, you are right.
Going back like 12+ years later and finally playing through the game on PC recently, it is surreal seeing the finished product after seeing the game without textures in it's alpha state (sometimes I wish I could go back and play that old version, it was a wip but actually fun to see them try new things)
I just remember listing small little details like that on my "feedback" sheet for them, but of course the only questions they asked us as a group was "how difficult was the last level for you? did you feel like it was unfair scale 1-10" kind of generic stuff.
Another 50 caliber not mentioned is 50 Beowulf, which you can get an AR chambered in. Even uses the same magazines, but instead of 30 rounds of 5.56, it holds 10 huge honker rounds 😅
if i recall correctly, Brandon herrera did a video on a ak 50 chambered in 50 beowulf
If you believed the hype 6.5 Grendel and 50 Beowulf were supposed to be the bestest
I think something that'd be neat and help illustrate the difference between .50 BMG and .50 AE would be to show their effect on a block of ballistic gelatin side-by-side, which apparently nobody have done yet.
Or, 50AE compared to 5.56 NATO. They’re very similar in terms of energy, but very different applications.
Many people have done that already, search youtube
Gamespot....you're doing something right here with these in depth firearm videos. Please continue this and find more topics to discuss and explain, mainly because lots of gamers are very ignorant to firearms, ballistics, calibers, etc. Informing more players of the correct info is key, especially the long debated clip vs magazine argument....and yes they are two different things to those who don't know.
@7:20 I think that is a sweeping endorsement for exoskeletons/power armor from Jonathan Ferguson so we can all start carrying .50 BMG as NATO standard.
I actually really like Halo's take on ammunition. Their more simple weapons use a few rounds akin to those we use now, especially their take on 7.62x51mm. The rest are all a bit more substantial than our modern norms. 9.5x40mm for a standard rifle, 12.7x40mm for a standard handgun, and their anti-materiel rifles even use 14.5x114mm fin-stabilized sabot rounds. Their light and heavy machineguns range from the same 7.62x51mm rounds to their own equivalent of .50 BMG. There's also an interesting 5x23mm caseless rounds for an SMG.
Someone really put a lot of thought into it, and I appreciate that attention to detail.
Why is your channel switched over all this quality, an interesting gun content. I've watched more of your videos recently then ever.
A small clarification - kinetic energy is .5(mass)(velocity)^2. This means that an increase in velocity will increase kinetic energy much more than a proportional increase in mass. Ballistics are much more complex than just kinetic energy of course, but this is a quick illustration of the importance of velocity.
You did a video about my biggest pet peeve in games like Fallout 4! Thank you! I hope the devs out there watched this!
I really do commend Gamespot for doing more to educate the masses on firearms. This isn't just interesting but very informative as well
I love that this channel is sharing knowledge with people who actually know how weapons work in real life to educate how devastating the weapons are in real life as gaming depicts the unreal stats of weapons
Next video is going to be ''How a crowbar became a gaming icon''
Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum: "...uuuh."
I’ll interview Gordon himself. I’m sure he would have loads to say on the subject
Deus Ex (2000) has a variety of cartridges: from 10 mm for both the pistol and the stealth pistol, to the 20 mm grenade rounds for the assault rifle. There are also two 12 gauge cartridge types: buckshot and sabot, though I dont know what the latter does to enemies. I’m a stealth runner.
7:05 you can see the hesitation as his fingers tremble before he fires that last .50 AE round. The first shot was fine, it's those follow ups that scare you.
Lovely to see more footage of Jonathan getting hands on with the collection, and I for one would love to see him just do that for a whole video; while talking us through each weapon and it's history/traits. I know, not exactly Gamespot content, but he could focus on the gaming relations of it, no?
I love how you said that in modern games "when have come a long way from picking up generic pistol or rifle ammo" then literally the next clip was from hunt showdown where you pick up generic long, medium or short ammo
Loving the new format! The tighter framework you’re building really helps keep things moving, while still loose in a fun way.
For explanatory content, animation, and editing, this video may be the best explanation of the general topic of caliber on UA-cam, including all non-gaming content. Great work.
Pardon the American spelling.
Very good episode with lots of useful info that can be used by those keen to learn more about their games.
Thank you!
This is way more informative / entertaining than one person reviewing a game for a whole website...
15:50 The flip is just for some flare but the rest of that reload animation I love so much. The miss on the first attempt to hook to the front quickly, so you slow down and take your time to line it up before committing to the snap in. I much rather these types of reloads in games over the perfect fast and smooth ones.
It's not a reload animation; it's an inspect animation. The reload animation in that game is much quicker and snappier which sort of neglects all the positives that you enjoyed, sadly.
What game is that
@@CobroxYT Modern Warfare II (2022)
As an American and therefore firearms enthusiast, great job, this is a very good video
I love the montage of “all the games” with 3/5 clips from Tarkov!
The illustration for 7.62x39 was definitely a 7.92x33 kurz, and the illustration for a 7.62x54 was definitely a 30-06 or 7.62x63
I thought it looked a little short!
I wanted to see the 50 BMG poked into the front of the Desert Eagle to comically illustrate the point, but I understand that's not something you'd do when handling firearms safely even with dud rounds and an empty gun.
You can find some people shooting a 50BMG out of a 12-gauge on youtube. They fit and will fire, but since the cartridge is necked, there's no gas seal so not much happens except a loud noise.
Maybe with a prop gun and plastic prop bullet?
8:46 Shouting this into a CRT makes it especially funny
Just what you need for retro gaming :)
Haha it took a few takes and I was a little hoarse for the rest of the day
The reason 10mm was featured so much in Fallout is because back when Fallout 1 was being made 10mm was the hot new thing, with a lot of the gun world in the early 90's singing its praises as the caliber of the future.
I remember the 10mm variant of the MP5 being toted as the next best thing, then the UMP45 came along and stole its thunder and .45 in general seemed to take over in the pistol cartridge world.
10mm is a great cartridge, but it wasn't widely adopted because many shooters couldn't handle the recoil and because 9mm is cheaper to produce and train with. The FBI planned to adopt 10mm but the agents complained of the recoil. I carry and shoot my 9mm pistols more than my 10mm pistol but I do sometimes bring the 10mm for hiking and camping trips in bear country. A 10mm Glock with the right loading can take down bears and mountain lions with more power than a .357 Magnum and about 3/4 the power of a .44 Magnum, while using a reliable and familiar weapons system with a standard capacity 15 round magazine.
I clicked on this video in preparation to tear down a slew of bad information. I was pleasantly surprised and happy to be presented with a well made video. Good job Gamespot.
Excellent! Love this! I want more videos about mechanics/details like this rather than just guns.
ah yes...time for more boom boom knowledge
It's amazing that you've brought mr. Ferguson into the studio to film him proper. Always a great time when he's explaining things :)
- unfa
Sorry I should've switched accounts before commenting.
If you guys ever run out of ideas, I would love to see you guys do the same thing but for vehicles in video games. Like tanks and airplanes and stuff.
The spotter in me feels compelled to note that 7.62x54 is a rimmed cartridge and not rimless as shown near the beginning of the episode, it's even called 7.62x54"R" for "Rimmed" (or Russian, possibly wrongly). NATO 7.62x51 on the other hand is rimless.
yeah, 7.62x54mmR, where R stands for Rimmed.
3:48 lol, imagining one of the gun model programmers for the CoD vanguard project, being completely clueless about guns, goes home and trying practicing his gun knowledge just from the game he makes instead of going to the proper shooting range where he can be taught by instructors.
I have a .50 cal. It's a rifled black powder musket, but it's .50 cal.
Can you talk about the Usas 12 next? Or some of the other known firearms that weren’t actually used in combat situations except in video games?
They did "5 Iconic Gaming Weapons That Aren't As Real As You Think" exactly about that but without USAS-12.
@@KasumiRINA Yeah, but there were a few more in games that I think it would be fun to see covered
This series and "Expert react to abc" slowly became my weekly dose of therapy lol.
would be interesting to see more games use large caliber anti-materiel rifles as a tool rather than a weapon. for example, the Barrett .50cal was created for eliminating highly armored vehicles and is also used for bomb disposal
Into the radius is very nice with this, since its vr where you load each mag bullet by bullet, you get to experience every calliber as a different model, its very nice
7:24 It's mass times velocity squared (technically Ek=(m*v^2)/2). That is why you want fast bullets. Adding velocity does more than adding mass.
These 2 guys carry this channel
Spotted a tiny error : payday 2 is from overkill software now not 505
Great video! Some thoughts from the dev perspective.
Caliber is a balancing metric because it's easy for players to understand and compare numbers. We have to over-index on those numbers to balance across classes because the other, realistic differentiators of weapon types are either:
-intangible/difficult to portray (why you'd want to clear a house with a short barrel weapon vs long, how a magazine of .338 Lapua costs 4x to empty what 7.62 does)
-unpleasant/high friction player experiences (needing to set an LMG or Barrett rifle down to reload it, taking 30 seconds to reload a streetsweeper 12 gauge)
-unfun/unfair/random(like depicted how wildly inaccurate most fully automatic weapons really are and that they don't draw the exact same pattern every time.)
"Hey I spent all this time setting up this camera track, so we'll use it for a bunch of shots."
"Ok but there's going to be some variety?"
...
"OK BUT THERE'S GOING TO BE SOME VARIETY?"
Hey i think its really cool you guys say the games names makes it allot easier to find a game you might find interesting.
Excellent series man, reminds me of RetroAhoy
Im happy that gamespot is just a gun channel now
Syphon filter way back in the 90's emphasized cartridge size. The omega strain from 2004 had more gun options than any other game for a good long while.
I already know about guns, i have quite a few but i appreciate you teaching the average gamer about guns
Two guns that a lot of games get wrong are the P90 and the MP7. The 5.7x28 and 4.6x30 are body armor piercing rounds and are weaker against regular targets but they seem to do less damage against game body armor than rifles and more against regular targets in close quarters. Not a big thing at all, but its still interesting how much they change to fit game mechanics
Good job and as someone who shoots and reloads ammo it's so frustrating to see these inaccuracies when I game!
The Escape from Pripyat pack for Stalker Anomaly did a nice job with this where different ammunition types are rated for defeating different levels of armour. It becomes a situation where someone complains that their shiny new toy isn't doing the damage that they expect it to, then when asked "what were you firing?" they'll just say "5.56, or 7.62x54" and then you need to ask them again, "hollow point, fmj, ap?" then they start complaining that it's all too complicated.
As an avid gun-nerd and only casual (at best) game player, I love this content.
Such high production value for a channel whose writers don't know the difference between circumference and diameter (1:08 to 1:30)
The Loadout series is great, but this one was particularly interesting. Thanks Dave!
One game that nailed ammo variety was Fallout New Vegas.
There was pretty wide variation between, say, the 5.56 pistol and 5.56 service rifle. However, you can load either of these guns with .223, 5.56 armor piercing, and more. Even the shotgun ammo included a wide range of types: buckshot, slug, bean bag, coin shot. Some ammo trades gun deterioration for damage broadly. Some are specialized for different types of targets. Putting a narrow choke in the hunting shotgun and loading it with slugs make it devastating at medium range, and this really amplifies the versatility of combat in the game.
The inclusion of a reloading bench made this mechanic even better because you could reclaim cases, powder, and lead from a cartridge type then use those supplies to load AP, HP, +P, and other ammo types.
A fun and informative video! Would you guys look into and talk about magazines/clips/feed systems of firearms? Keep up the great work!
Thank you! I touched on that a little in the Attachments episode, but there’s definitely more to discuss!
recoil is largely a function of the slide hitting the end of the guide. this makes the buffer really important in regards to recoil, matching the force of the slide. if the slide goes the full distance without hitting too hard then you have the least amount of recoil, as the force is spread across the time the slide moves. if the slide doesn't go the full length you might have jamming issues.
UA-cam gonna be coming after Gamespot for this content soon with all those animations of magazines being inserted into virtual guns
A 1911 is NOT a Colt 45. A Colt 45 is a revolver. "Colt 45" was first used in reference to the Colt Single Action Army revolver, aka Peacemaker, aka Model P, aka SAA, aka M1873.
The 1911 is made by Colt, and it's .45, so people call it a Colt 45. People have been calling it this pretty much since the day it was birthed in to the world.
12:27 Fallout has cartridges that are different from those in the real world, though not necessarily larger. For example, the Assault Rifle in Fallout used 5mm cartridges, which is smaller than any real world assault rifle caliber.
Usually it's just the slower the fire rate, the higher the damage. Justification for why can come later.
Would love to hear Jonathan talk about different ammo types of the same size like Tarkov. Grain and actual propellent material/ why they're different.
I'm so glad the days of you picking up an enemy's AK ammo after magically removing it from gun and magazines and it fitting your M16 seem to be going away- it annoyed me all the time!
About certain guns and rifles referencing their cartridge type/caliber, the AT4 fires 84 mill, and A-T-4 sounds like "eighty-four", and the AT usually stands for anti-tank, which is one use of the AT4 if im not wrong
I loved the video, you did a very nice job explaining it. What some people in the comments don’t realize is the difference between actual ballistics and just having fun playing a game. Sure, realism in video games is desirable but, creators have to balance realism with gameplay. If you shoot a 5.56 round from a 16” barrel it will have way more velocity than the exact same round out of say a 3” barrel. Or the same round from a bolt action vs a gas operated semiautomatic. There are simply too many variables to accommodate without suffering playability with your standard platforms right now. Just enjoy the game and be glad that you aren’t really being shot at.
I'm glad you made a video about ammunition specifically. I think ammunition is ironically and weirdly the most overlooked thing about firearms when they are arguably the most important part of a gun. Without them a gun is just a club. Is a laser gun "cool" because it's a gun that shoots a laser or is it the laser that makes the gun "cool'? Would laser and plasma guns be half as "cool" if they shot normal bullets instead of lasers and plasma? Plus there's really cool and instresting experimental rounds that have been tested like telescoped ammo, caseless rounds, flechettes, trounds, smart grenades, and SCMITR.
Thank you. Movies and video games drive me insane when it comes to guns/ammo..
Alright Gamespot, hear me out.
You now have two amazing series on this channel, obviously, the Weapon Expert React, and this, the Loadout.
You need a brand new series, and sadly, these two series are all just about Weapon, and revolve around Royal Armories.
I suggest you make a series called
"Game Revisited" where you guys went full journalist mode about games throughout the year.
Recalling old games like Why Twisted Metal was so popular back in early 20s, Guitar Hero, any recent games too, etc.
Make 12 minutes fun and informative videos ala Vox videos or Business Insiders about games.
I love being able to have gun knowledge explained to me by John Ferguson and not a USMC DI, months away from dying in a meat grinder I didn’t sign up for.
my fav difference was in PUBG using 9mm for pistols, and the VSS. But the VSS's 9x39 being one of the biggest bullets out there
I'm only watching this because the Desert Eagle in Farcry5 uses the same ammo as the 50 cal rifle. I didn't realize it at first and was having a good time blowing away bears, but when I needed a rifle, all of the ammo was gone! I never even considered they would shoot the same bullet because that's ridiculous.
tbh, I left this episode with a slight respect for devs. Modern games aren't that bad at depicting calibers, all things considered
I remember playing Return to castle Wolfenstein and found it strange that the same ammo did different damage depending on what gun I used.
Video games like call of duty is the main reason the public has a real hard time understanding firearms. For a long time I knew some people that actually beloved the claymore has a red laser that detonates when someone walks by. The same concept comes with guns. It baffles me how a m4 has a weaker damage than a AUG even though both shoot the same cartridge. Now of course type of bullet, barrel length, velocity can change that. But not by a huge difference.
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is how games implement SMGs.
what makes a sub machine gun a sub machine gun is the fact that it fires pistol rounds, meaning a handgun and a SMG pack the same firepower. Yet games always make handguns more powerful than SMGs, which at this point I’ve accepted as their way of balancing gameplay. But if a game is claiming to be all about realism, well it’s just something to consider.
Worth noting that there's yet another definition to "Caliber" - the length of the weapon's barrel as a multiple of it's diameter.
For instance, a 120mm L/55 is a Rheinmetall smoothbore cannon with a barrel length 55 times it's diameter; that being 6600mm long.
While less common terminology with small arms, you *could* describe a Barrett M107 a ".50cal, 58 caliber rifle" by dividing it's total barrel length of 737mm by 12.7mm (metric for .50cal)... Now, of course we don't do that, but in naval guns, artillery, and armoured vehicle weapons where distinctions of "Carbine" and "Marksmen" don't exist - but different barrel lengths still do - it's a much more useful way to differentiate them.
I find it funny how in some games,such as in GTA 5 Online,the AK and the G36 use the same "assault rifle ammo",and the Beretta 92, the 1911, the Desert Eagle and even the Colt 1851 revolver all use the same "pistol ammo". I get why they do it,it wouldn't be as fun if you had to buy several different types of ammo for each handgun or each rifle,but it's still kinda weird how going to the gun store to buy ammo for your Beretta automatically gives you ammo for every other handgun you have,regardless of what cartridge they're chambered in (and vice versa,shooting your Beretta lowers the ammount of ammo you have for other handguns).