Bugs showing up right after Microsoft launches a new update don’t faze anyone anymore. In fact, a patch rolling out without a single bug would be even more surprising. Despite all the bugs we’ve seen over the years, what still feels strange is a Windows 11 update triggering a bug that affects a 20-year-old game, GTA San Andreas.

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Skimmer seaplane disappeared after the Windows 11 24H2 update

skimmer-dissapeared
Image Credit: Silent

After Windows 11 version 24H2 (also known as the 2024 Update) was rolled out on October 1st, 2024, to PCs running Windows 11, players who’ve stayed loyal to the classic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas started noticing something weird.

The Skimmer seaplane, a propeller aircraft, was nowhere to be found in the game, even in its usual spawn location. Gamers mentioned that when they attempted to use the vehicle spawner mod, the game would crash completely. Eventually, the developer of SilentPatch caught wind of the situation. SilentPatch is essentially a community-made fix that patches bugs and improves how older PC games run on modern systems, created by a developer called Silent.

Silent shared on his blog that he received the following report on the SilentPatch GitHub issue tracker:

When I upgraded my windows to version 24H2, the Skimmer plane disappear completely from the game. It can’t be spawn using trainer nor it can’t be found anywhere on it’s normal spawn points. I’m using both my modded copy (which is before the update, is completely fine) and vanilla copy with only silentpatch (I tried the 2018, 2020 and the most recent version of silentpatch) and the plane still won’t exist.

Silent mentions that this wasn’t the first time he’d heard about the issue, and that he’d been receiving similar complaints on GTAForums since November 2024. While some gamers blamed a SilentPatch update, others reported the issue even on unmodded versions of the game. One user mentioned setting up a Virtual Machine (VM) with Windows 11 23H2, where the Skimmer spawned just fine. But once they updated the VM to Windows 11 24H2, the plane disappeared again.

Silent noted that his home PC is on Windows 10 22H2 and his work machine on Windows 11 23H2. After attempting to reproduce the bug, he found that the Skimmer spawned just fine on both. However, when he asked users who had upgraded to 24H2, all of them could reproduce the issue. So, Silent set up a 24H2 virtual machine and saw the same thing—no Skimmer at its usual location, even though all other planes and boats spawned just fine. He even tried to spawn the plane using a script, but that ended up launching the character 19.3 octillion kilometers into the sky.

Don’t blame Windows 11 for this one

A Windows 11 laptop showing the Disk Management UI

Silent noticed that GTA San Andreas would pause with SilentPatch installed, and that kicked off a long debugging session. He eventually pinpointed the bug within a function called CPlane::PreRender, where the game would freeze in a loop while trying to "normalize the rotor blade angle to the 0–360 degree range." He then realized the issue was in GTA’s configuration file, vehicles.ide. The Skimmer’s entry in the file was strangely shorter than other planes, and was missing the last four parameters, two of which control front and rear wheel scale. According to Silent, this was normal for boats, but not for Skimmers.

Once Silent added the missing parameters, the issue was fixed. He believes Rockstar introduced the issue because in GTA Vice City, the Skimmer was defined as a boat, meaning those parameters were unnecessary. But in San Andreas, its classification changed to a plane, so the parameters were required. Adding them must’ve slipped Rockstar’s mind at the time.

What’s still surprising is how this issue took 20 years to appear, and why Windows 11 24H2 specifically triggered it. While Silent dives deep into the technical explanation in his blog, the gist is that it was purely luck and coincidence that kept the bug hidden all these years.

Minor internal changes in Windows 11 24H2, related to how temporary stack memory works, managed to trigger the bug. So, Windows 11 24H2 and Microsoft aren’t to blame for the issue; GTA San Andreas is. Silent also confirmed that he’ll include a fix in the next SilentPatch update.