What causes physics tick rate costing too much?

The fixed physics timestep is very small (a high tick rate), so physics runs many times per frame, multiplying the cost of an already-heavy simulation.

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 Physics Costing Too Much from a High Tick Rate

Quick answer: Use the largest stable physics timestep, reduce per-tick physics work, and only raise the tick rate for the bodies that genuinely need it.

High physics cost from the tick rate is too many steps per frame. Tuning it fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Use the largest stable timestep

A smaller fixed timestep means more physics steps per second and more cost. Use the largest timestep that keeps your simulation stable, rather than a very high tick rate that multiplies the work unnecessarily.

2. Reduce per-tick work

Lower the number of active bodies, simplify colliders, and cut solver iterations to the minimum that stays stable, so each physics step is cheaper. A heavy simulation at a high tick rate compounds both costs.

3. Raise the rate only where needed

If only fast objects (bullets) need fine steps, handle those specifically (continuous collision, substeps for them) rather than raising the global tick rate, which makes every body pay for a few.

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.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.