hey there,

in the past i just set fps_max and fps_min and was fine with that. but once i downloaded and tested a lot of software/games i now have a pretty jumpy time_step value that jumps from 0.250 up to 0.500 pretty frequently.
this is due to running background processes and harddrive activity, think of fragmented harddrive, open winamp and so on. i was surprised that this really messes up every command wich uses time_step like c_move, vec_accelerate... you get the idea. the result is stuttering, ugly looking movement and the game getting out of sync wich is especially bad for any skill based game.
i do not have this behavior with any other game or engine.

this can not be accepted in my mind, because i think a lot of casual gamers have a situation like i do (lots of crap(other games) installed on the system)... if you deliver a a7 game wich is programmed to be framerate independet, and everything is multiplied with time_step the player will see so many stuttering movement and not play the game.

now what i did was take out my laptop wich does not suffer from the above described problems. i consulted my manual and played around with the same source on both stations only changing the 3 values. (fps_max, fps_min, time_smooth)

now in theory one should find values that work for every 3dgs game and every computer best!!! why?
simply because you can not say how much the time_step is jumping on the target computer (it could range from almost no jumps at all to frequent jumps causing the double time_step value every x'th frame). shure you could measure the difference in time_step every frame and if the difference is too high, set a higher time_smooth value. but you have to start with something, if you dont set time_smooth you will almost certainly produce problems on some pc's.

at least thats what i found out, also there is some kind of strange difference in window mode and fullscreen. windowmode always looks more stuttering in the movement although it comes with more fps.

so please lets test this out, right now i'm using the following:

fps_max = 190;
fps_min = 16;
time_smooth = 0.75;

this gives me the best results on both machines, but its not perfect. shure i could just say its the users fault if he tries to play a game with winamp running and has a fragmented harddrive. but if you think so you might lose a lot of possible customers. -> not everyone has a perfectly clean pc. *duck*

so lets discuss please. thanks.