Skyrim Players Shocked To Find Flying Horse
It's a bird, it's a plane - no, it's a flying horse. While horses are a great way to get around in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it's not every day you see one zipping across the skies above Tamriel. Has Bethesda taken a leaf out of Disney's book and turned the game into a Hercules spin-off?
Since its release in 2011, Skyrim has become known as not only one of the greatest video games of all time, but one of the glitchiest of all time. In the past few weeks alone, we've covered a rogue werewolf, how you can shout butterflies to death, and a bizarre box that you can't get rid of. Now, jump on the back of your own mythical pegasus - well, not quite.
Why are there flying horses in Skyrim?
Posting on the Skyrim subreddit, u/OperationGlobal7829 showed off a flying horse flying around above Honningbrew Meadery. One fan joked, "It's just the imperial air force on patrol", while another added, "Just a Mage testing his levitate spell and hoping no one will witness the crime, LOL". A third simply concluded, "Now I want to make a mod..." We give it a week before we're writing about a flying horse mod.
Before we write off this as another baffling Skyrim glitch, it looks like there's an actual reason behind the flying horse. Posting on the thread, someone said, "For clarification: many Skyrim speedruns involve getting on a horse, then using save/reload glitches to launch the player halfway across the continent. I don’t understand how it works exactly, but if you search for Skyrim speedruns on Youtube you’ll see what I mean."
This isn't the first time we've seen a flying horse though. If you head to Skyborn Altar, there's a perched dragon that you can jump on the back off while riding your mount. With the right timing, it means you can ride a dragon...while riding a horse.
Are there more flying animals in Skyrim?
Flying horses remind us of when flying mammoths were taking over the skies in Skyrim. Issues with higher frame rates or having V-sync turned off can cause physics errors that make the likes of horses and mammoths to float across the sky, it's largely thought to do with fast-travel. There are instances where animals hover in the sky when they're found in the area someone is fast-travelling to.
Flying horses aren't anything new, but apparently, it's a lot more common with mammoths. With those prehistoric favourites having a bigger boundary box than most animals, it means they often intersect with trees and rocks. Skyrim tries to avoid this by altering their placement - which can lead to them briefly appearing in the air before they drop back down.
Most of these Skyrim glitches have become iconic over the past decade, with some players even asking for them to be added in when The Elder Scrolls 6 eventually releases. You'll have to wait and see whether flying horses make the leap, but with the long-awaited sequel still a way off, don't hold your breath.
