Red Dead Online players are flying outside the map using a wibbly wobbly bridge

Red Dead Online's community had often looked for ways to amuse itself while waiting for further content updates, and the latest obsession across Reddit and YouTube is... a bridge. But this isn't just any sort of bridge, as this one can hurl you across the map - or even into Mexico and beyond.

Although it's unclear who exactly discovered the glitch (it looks like this post by user jaitom may have been the first), for the past few days the Red Dead Online subreddit has been filled with videos of players using the bridge to launch them high into the air and out of bounds. It's even become slightly competitive, with friends attempting to outdo one another's launch distances, and see who can fly the furthest. The bridge has launched some players to Mars-like landscapes, while others have taken the opportunity to explore some of the unused buildings in Mexico.

After carrying out experiments on the bridge, players discovered that horses become injured then miraculously heal themselves when bounced on the wooden trampoline. Placing a whole lobby full of players on the bridge may sound like a fun time, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to work particularly well, as the bridge can only launch a couple of players at a time. Form an orderly queue, please.

Last night some players began to report that the bridge glitch had been patched out by Rockstar, but having tested it myself on PC this morning, I can say that's certainly not the case - greetings from Mexico. Through my own experiments I found it's possible to launch NPCs up into the sky, should you want to use that as entertainment. I won't judge.

So, how do you do this? First you'll need to grab yourself a stack of throwable weapons - such as throwing knives or tomahawks - and head to the canyons west of McFarlane's Ranch. Once you find the two bridges, you'll need to head to the southern bridge and sink a few knives into either the third or fourth planks on the bridge. It takes a fair bit of experimentation to get working, and I found that planting two knives into one plank would often get me wilder results than one. Plenty of my early tries only gave me a small bounce, and I ended up falling into the ditch and dying - losing some of my throwing knives in the process.

While it's likely Rockstar will eventually patch this out - much to the disappointment of many players - for now, it's a fun and very silly activity to keep you entertained in the world of Red Dead Online. If only Dutch could have used this to get to Tahiti.