Say I have a simple game with a gameLoop function that gets called every 50 milliseconds or something similar, and I have a box2d object. Is it bad practice/too CPU intensive to use SetLinearVelocity on the object every time the gameLoop is called?
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It's only bad if you find this to be detrimental to the performance of your game. I find it unlikely that setting the velocity directly would be very expensive.
If you do find that this is an issue, by profiling the code, you can create a simple function that only updates the box2D object's velocity if your external velocity value has changed. Something like:
if(velocity != oldVelocity) {
box2DObject.SetLinearVelocity(velocity);
oldVelocity = velocity;
}
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1\$\begingroup\$ Most physics engines don't like it much if you're setting velocity directly, instead of applying accelerations (or even better, impulses); it often leads to bad behaviour in collisions. But no, there's no CPU performance reason not to do it. \$\endgroup\$ Mar 19 2013 at 22:26
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\$\begingroup\$ Make sure its a kinematic bodytype and the are no worries about the engine handling it incorrectly. \$\endgroup\$ Mar 20 2013 at 0:20