How to Fix Mushy Movement From Lerp-Based Acceleration and Deceleration

Lerp-smoothed movement feels mushy because it asymptotically approaches the target and depends on frame rate. Use a constant rate instead. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Replace Lerp with MoveTowards

Use MoveTowards(currentSpeed, targetSpeed, accel * deltaTime) so speed changes at a fixed rate and actually reaches the target. Lerp's t factor never fully arrives and varies with frame rate.

2. Separate accel and decel rates

Use a faster deceleration than acceleration (or vice versa) to taste. Distinct rates give snappy stops and weighty starts, which Lerp's single curve cannot express.

3. Keep it frame-rate independent

Multiply the rate by delta time so the feel is identical at 30 and 144 fps. Raw per-frame Lerp factors change the curve when the frame rate changes.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.