How to Fix a Floating-Capsule Controller Oscillating Above the Ground

A floating-capsule controller that pogos at rest is an undamped spring. The classic fix is a damped spring (PD controller) on the ride height. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Use a damped spring force

Compute force as (rideHeightError * springStrength) - (relativeVelocity * springDamper). The damper term removes the oscillation that a pure proportional spring leaves behind.

2. Measure error from the ground ray

Cast down to find the distance to the floor, subtract the desired ride height to get the error, and apply the damped spring along the up axis at the capsule.

3. Apply equal force to the ground body

If standing on a rigidbody, apply the opposite force to it so the interaction is physically correct and the capsule does not appear to push through movable surfaces.

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.