Irregular .onStep() updates

[florian-s-code]

Hi,

I get strange results when I use .onStep(). It sometimes updates very fastly, sometimes very slowly and it sometimes begins very fast and then becomes slow after a random time (delta from 5 to >30).

A simple requestAnimationFrame() gives me regular updates on an attempt and on each attempts. Comparison test : http://cssdeck.com/labs/w6wdovya

[rezoner]

onStep is based on interval which is set to 25 onRender is using requestAnimationFrame which will run as fast as possible

You should use delta in your formulas like

x += speed * delta / 1000;

Speed is in pixels per second. Try to put that in both render and step and you will notice that they go at the same speed.

[florian-s-code]

Thank you for your reply, I should have used delta before but I was missing a formula so double thanks.

But why don't the 2 methods use requestAnimationFrame ?

[rezoner]

Well this is really simple.

When you change the tab in the browser. requestAnimationFrame stops - which is something you really want because it also stops to drain users CPU but the setInterval is still going - that's why we use it for logic update - because usually you want the game to proceed - same as you are alt-tabbing in windows.

Why not put logic in animationFrame? Because logic can be really heavy - for example when using physics - and you don't need 60 updates per second for physics - it could just kill the performance.

ps: well you can decrease FPS rate manually in requestAnimationFrame, so this is not 100% accurate answer :)

[florian-s-code]

I was using requestAnimationFrame for everything, thinking it would boost my games' performance but it was not the right way of using it. Thanks for the explanation.