# Camera inertia causes inconsistent motion

**URL:** <https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633>\
**Category:** Bugs\
**Tags:** camera\
**Created:** [September 23, 2025, 11:25pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633 "2025-09-23T23:25:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![georgie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/georgie/32/46049_2.png) [@georgie](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/georgie)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2025, 9:59pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/21 "2025-09-26T21:59:55Z")

</div>

thanks you for the detailed investigation / proposed solution! This is awesome and I agree with the logic behind your approach.

As a lot of us are out of office today let’s wait until Monday to discuss preferred solution if that’s alright 🙂 My PR is marked as draft in meantime

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reedsyllas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/reedsyllas/32/48389_2.png) [@reedsyllas](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/reedsyllas)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/22 "2025-09-26T22:46:13Z")

</div>

No problem! In hindsight, the math was simpler than I thought it would be. Hopefully, I didn’t make any more oversights on the latest version 🙂.

And there’s no need to rush the implementation on my behalf. I built a simple wrapper of `ArcRotateCamera` implementing this logic for my own use. Though, it will be nice to use all the playground examples with a silky smooth camera soon!

Thank you for all your help and I’m looking forward to having this solved for everyone.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![georgie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/georgie/32/46049_2.png) [@georgie](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/georgie)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 10:21pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/23 "2025-09-29T22:21:35Z")

</div>

Hey! For back-compat reasons we need to ensure the public this.speed is still used when calculating inertial limit. So we are proposing the following [Camera inertia fixed | Babylon.js Playground](https://playground.babylonjs.com/#A8K1T4#11)

And the [PR](https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/pull/17197/files) is updated as well. If you can test / ensure it works on your device, I can publish PR 🙂 Thank you!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reedsyllas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/reedsyllas/32/48389_2.png) [@reedsyllas](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/reedsyllas)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 11:56pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/24 "2025-09-29T23:56:47Z")

</div>

Ah, yes! I figured `this.speed` could simply be included on the right hand side of my newest math formula posted earlier. Example:

```ts
Math.abs(this.cameraRotation.x) / scene.getEngine().getDeltaTime() < MinInertiaRotationPerMillisecond * this.speed

```

That said, your playground’s math _does_ track with my former posts. However, I did have to decrease the constant from `0.001` to `0.0001`, or else it cuts off too early. Since you’re using `Epsilon` in the PR, I’m not sure what the cleanest fix is. Do you just want to divide it by 10?

* * *

In my [last playground](https://playground.babylonjs.com/#A8K1T4#9), I declared different constants for each ‘purpose’ ahead of time. The idea was that the best cutoff for rotational inertia is probably different from the best one for positional inertia (since they are different units: radians and meters).

My somewhat arbitrary cutoff for rotational inertia in that playground was 1 / 250 of a radian per second. Or in other words, if inertia causes the camera to move slower than 0.004 radians per second, it should stop the inertia.

The rotational constant is defined like this:

```ts
const InertiaRotationNeededPerMillisecond = (2 * Math.PI) / 250 / 1000;
                                            // 1 / 250 radians per second in milliseconds

```

The positional constant is defined like this (though I didn’t dial it in so it’s just a copy-paste with the unit replaced):

```ts
const InertiaPanNeededPerMillisecond = 1 / 250 / 1000;
                                       // 1 / 250 'meters' per second in milliseconds

```

Putting them into separate constants lets us use a more precise cutoff for each. While I didn’t tune them, you can at least see that a different unit is used for each (1 radian and 1 meter) But, perhaps this is overkill when shrinking the shared epsilon suffices.

I’ll defer to you for the best course of action.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reedsyllas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/reedsyllas/32/48389_2.png) [@reedsyllas](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/reedsyllas)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 12:21am UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/25 "2025-09-30T00:21:53Z")

</div>

I feel like I didn’t do a great job explaining the unit mismatch issue. Take a look at these examples:

```auto
epsilon = 0.001
meters = 5000
meters * epsilon = 5

```

```auto
epsilon = 0.001
kilometers = 5
kilometers * epsilon = 0.005

```

You can see that the result differs here, even when the units are related `5000 meters = 5 kilometers`. The easiest way to fix this is by converting to the same unit:

```auto
epsilon = 0.001
kilometers = 5
meters = kilometers * 1000
meters * epsilon = 5

```

This process can be applied to the camera’s rotation too, by converting it from a radian to a percentage:

```ts
Math.abs(this.cameraRotation.x) / (2 * Math.PI)

```

Now it represents the number of rotations similar to how `Math.abs(this.cameraDirection.x)` represents the number of meters. I _think_ this would make comparisons with rotation and position more standardized.

All of this math has been put together in this playground:

> **[Babylon.js Playground](https://playground.babylonjs.com/#A8K1T4%2312)**
>
> Babylon.js playground is a live editor for Babylon.js WebGL and WebGPU 3D scenes

Edit: I still think two distinct cutoffs work better, but if only one is allowed then converting the distance unit and rotation unit into a percentage makes choosing the cutoff easier (“It shall be 1% of the rotation unit and 1% of the distance unit” vs “It shall be 0.01 rotation units and 0.01 distance units”). Maybe someone more clever than me can weigh in.

As long as the `inertia in radians / delta time` is checked against `0.000001` or below I’ll be happy (as in my testing that is small enough to avoid problems).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![georgie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/georgie/32/46049_2.png) [@georgie](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/georgie)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 6:15pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/26 "2025-09-30T18:15:48Z")

</div>

Hey @reedsyllas thank you again for the super detailed investigation / suggestions! It is very much appreciated and we will take this into account as we build the new camera input system mentioned above.

We discussed internally and because we are planning on revamping our camera input system, we’d like to avoid making any changes that may alter existing behavior. So rather than changing our calculation internally we are exposing \_panningEpsilon and \_rotationEpsilon that you may override per-frame as needed (in the beforeRender observable).

[Internally expose \_panningEpsilon and \_rotationEpsilon which are used to calculate inertial limit by georginahalpern · Pull Request #17197 · BabylonJS/Babylon.js](https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/pull/17197/files#diff-0a20c32e30766fce1a504f65bccc129aac003dc77ba8c6c7055e3322b5898bdb)

PR has been updated, please let us know if this does not address your concerns!

cc @sebavan @amoebachant

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reedsyllas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/reedsyllas/32/48389_2.png) [@reedsyllas](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/reedsyllas)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 6:50pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/27 "2025-09-30T18:50:55Z")

</div>

This looks like a good compromise! It’s probably the most versatile solution too (until the awesome revamp). PR looks good. Once it is merged, I’ll work on creating a playground that dynamically sets the epsilons with respect to delta time for anyone else wanting to use it in the short-term.

* * *

Regarding the investigation: thank you for the quick responses and good work! There’s been a lot of back and forth and I appreciate you (& the team) reading through my babbling. Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![amoebachant](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/amoebachant/32/39450_2.png) [@amoebachant](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/amoebachant)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633/28 "2026-01-13T17:13:45Z")

</div>



[Previous page](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/camera-inertia-causes-inconsistent-motion/60633.md?page=1)