Timers are a bit off?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Timers are a bit off?

-=Darkheart=-

(Posted 2003) [#1]

I was using timers to do some work and found that I was getting varying results that wern't quite consistent. I checked some other things and it kept coming back to the timer. I think timers aren't quite accurate and are consistently a bit faster than they should be.

If you set it to 30 you actually get 31 or 32, if you set it to 60 you get 62 or 63. I wrote a program that demonstrates this, try using different values in the CreateTimer command and you will see what I mean. If anything I would have thought you would get LESS FPS rather than more but it seems you always get a bit more.

This reduces the usefulness of timers if true as if I set 60 then I want it to really be 60 times a second every second not a bit either way.

Test program here:

;Test prog for timers
Graphics3D 800,600,32,2
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
CAMERA=CreateCamera()
LIGHT=CreateLight()
PIVOT=CreatePivot()
SPHERE=CreateSphere()
PositionEntity PIVOT,0,0,10
PositionEntity SPHERE,0,0,5
EntityParent sphere,pivot
Start_Time=MilliSecs()
My_timer=CreateTimer(60)
While Not KeyHit(1)
TurnEntity pivot,0,1,0
UpdateWorld
RenderWorld
WaitTimer(My_timer)
frame_counter=frame_counter+1
Flip
Wend
End_Time=MilliSecs()
Tot_Time#=End_Time-Start_Time
Tot_Time#=Float(Tot_Time#/1000)
fps#=Float(frame_counter/Tot_Time)
Print fps#
Print tot_time
Delay 3000
End

Darkheart