Third Person Controller Sample - Camera very shaky by default

🌵 Needle Engine
1

Hi,

This is the link to the sample of Third Person Controller.

As you can see, even from the live preview of the above sample, there is a weird and annoying constant camera shake or jitter.

I have tried playing it in multiple browsers in my gaming laptop and even on my Samsung phone yet by default there is camera shake or jitter which is very annoying.

This same behavior can be found when the sample is imported in unity for further edits.

Older threads have mentioned something about character controller and orbit controls fighting for control over the camera and thus i disabled the orbit controls script and yes the camera jitter stops but i am unable to look around the scene using my mouse.
Can someone please give a proper step by step in order to retain all functionalities but remove the annoying camera shake bug please…

2

Hi Amir,

To resolve the camera shake issue in the Third Person Controller, you can follow these steps:

  1. Review Camera and Controls Setup: Ensure that the camera and controls are not conflicting. The main cause of the shake is often the simultaneous control from both the character controller and the orbit controls.

  2. Disable Orbit Controls: Since disabling the orbit controls stops the jitter but takes away your ability to look around, you may need to adjust the orbit controls instead of completely turning them off.

  3. Adjust OrbitControls Settings: You can enable damping in the orbit controls configuration. Damping helps smooth the camera movements. In your OrbitControls component:

    • Enable damping by setting enableDamping to true.
    • Set an appropriate dampingFactor (try values between 0.1 and 0.5).

  4. Implement Custom Camera Targeting: Use a custom camera management script to only control your camera when it’s appropriate, instead of relying solely on the orbit controls or character movement:

    • Create a separate component to calculate where the camera should be and interpolate its position smoothly based on the player’s position.

Here’s a pseudocode snippet for a custom camera handler:

// Pseudocode
class CustomCameraController {
    constructor(camera, target) {
        this.camera = camera;
        this.target = target; // the player
        this.offset = new Vector3(0, 1.5, -5); // adjust as needed
    }

    update() {
        const desiredPosition = this.target.position.clone().add(this.offset);
        
        // Smoothly interpolate to the desired position
        this.camera.position.lerp(desiredPosition, 0.1);
        this.camera.lookAt(this.target.position);
    }
}

// In your update loop
const cameraController = new CustomCameraController(camera, player);
  1. Test Across Different Devices: After making these adjustments, ensure you test on different devices to make sure the behavior is consistent.

By carefully managing which components affect the camera and smoothing out the transitions, the shake can be mitigated while still allowing player control.

If you have any specific component configurations or additional code snippets you’re working on, share them so I can provide more tailored advice!

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3

Hi, can you list more details about which devices you tried this link on and see camera jitter? We’re not aware of that issue, and I just tested across some of our test devices here and can’t reproduce it, so more info would be appreciated. Thanks!

4

Hello Felix!
Thank you for the swift response.

I used Unity 2022 and the Needle package to try to use the Third Person Controller Sample and previewed it in my MS Edge Browser and everything seemed to work but the camera was janky/shaking/jittering/vibrating throughout the gameplay.
I thought maybe i did something wrong so i went to the official sample preview and found the same issue there.

I ran the official sample preview on my:

  1. Dell Precision 7780
    13th gen intel core i9
    64GB RAM
    RTX 4090

Edge Browser
Firefox Browser
Chrome Browser

Samsung Galaxy Fold 6
Chrome Browser

Here’s an entire video recording of everything I mentioned:

A solution to fix this in unity will be highly appreciated!

5

Wow, that looks crazy. I’ll try to find a device where this reproduces.

Could you do a quick test and visit Hardware Tester in the same browser and write here what you see there? Just want to know if your browser uses your RTX or the integrated graphics.

6

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7

Thanks – I recommend you check your Nvidia settings to allow your browser(s) to actually access your graphics card, you’re missing out on all that nice RTX performance in the browser right now :wink:

I was able to reproduce the jittering by applying 20x CPU throttling in the Chrome dev console, will see if we can get this fixed.

8

I have been doing game and VR Dev on this laptop for 2 months without realizing this :man_facepalming: Thanks!

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9

After making the switch to NVIDIA GPU there is no camera jitter effect. The sample runs smooth. Thanks!
I have asked a few others to check it on their laptops too.
Will let you know if they find the jitter bug.

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