Dynamic tracking with a delay. An illustration of how increasing delays make control difficult.

Try to keep the red ball inside the blue target, using the mouse.

The red ball has momentum and is subject to drag. It is, in effect, coupled to your mouse location by a spring, subject to a pipeline delay.

Initially the task is fairly easy. Use the keyboard to increase complexity of the task by changing the dynamics of the ball ( b and m), allowing the target to drift (t), and adding a delay between the mouse and ball control (d). You can toggle display of your delayed mouse location (s). You may need to click in the window to give it focus before the controls work.

Get a feel for it, then crank the delay and drift up to 5 and see how you fare.

Draws on Processing's easing, keyboard and arraylist examples.

Tom Fiddaman, Ventana Systems, 2009

Source code: DragDot2 Location TextControl

Built with Processing