What causes jump height varying with frame rate?

Gravity and jump velocity are applied per frame rather than per second on a fixed step, so the integration differs by frame rate and the same jump reaches different heights.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Jump Height Varying with Frame Rate

Quick answer: Apply jump physics on the fixed physics step, integrate gravity by time, and verify the jump height matches at low and high frame rates.

Jump height varying with frame rate is per-frame physics. A fixed step fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Use the fixed physics step

Apply the jump impulse and integrate gravity on the fixed physics timestep, which runs at a constant rate, so the jump arc is the same regardless of render frame rate. Per-frame application varies with frame rate.

2. Integrate gravity by time

Accumulate gravity by elapsed time, not a constant per frame, so the downward acceleration is consistent. Frame-based gravity pulls harder at high frame rates, changing the jump height.

3. Verify at different frame rates

Test the jump at 30 and 144 frames per second and confirm the height matches. If it differs, some part of the jump physics is still frame-dependent and needs to be moved to time-based or fixed-step.

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.

The bug you can't reproduce isn't gone — it's just invisible until you capture it from the player's device.