Acceleration in Unity : <p>I am trying to emulate acceleration and deceleration in Unity.</p>

<p>I have written to code to generate a track in Unity and place an object at a specific location on the track based on time. The result looks a little like this.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/1syKu.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/1syKu.png" alt="Cube mid way through Catmull-Rom Spline"></a></p>

<p>The issue I currently have is that each section of the spline is a different length and the cube moves across each section at a different, but uniform, speed. This causes there to be sudden jumps in the change of the speed of the cube when transitioning between sections.</p>

<p>In order to try and fix this issue, I attempted to use <a href="https://gist.github.com/xanathar/735e17ac129a72a277ee" rel="noreferrer">Robert Penner's easing equations</a> on the <code>GetTime(Vector3 p0, Vector3 p1, float alpha)</code> method. However, whilst this did help somewhat, it was not sufficient. There were still jumps in speed in between transitions.</p>

<p>Does anyone have any ideas on how I could dynamically ease the position of the cube to make it look like it was accelerating and decelerating, without large jumps in speed between segments of the track?</p>

<hr>

<p>I have written a script that shows a simple implementation of my code. It can be attached to any game object. To make it easy to see what is happening when the code runs, attach to something like a cube or sphere.</p>

<pre><code>using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
#if UNITY_EDITOR
using UnityEditor;
#endif

public class InterpolationExample : MonoBehaviour {
    [Header("Time")]
    [SerializeField]
    private float currentTime;
    private float lastTime = 0;
    [SerializeField]
    private float timeModifier = 1;
    [SerializeField]
    private bool running = true;
    private bool runningBuffer = true;

    [Header("Track Settings")]
    [SerializeField]
    [Range(0, 1)]
    private float catmullRomAlpha = 0.5f;
    [SerializeField]
    private List&lt;SimpleWayPoint&gt; wayPoints = new List&lt;SimpleWayPoint&gt;
    {
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(-4.07f, 0, 6.5f), time = 0},
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(-2.13f, 3.18f, 6.39f), time = 1},
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(-1.14f, 0, 4.55f), time = 6},
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(0.07f, -1.45f, 6.5f), time = 7},
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(1.55f, 0, 3.86f), time = 7.2f},
        new SimpleWayPoint() {pos = new Vector3(4.94f, 2.03f, 6.5f), time = 10}
    };

    [Header("Debug")]
    [Header("WayPoints")]
    [SerializeField]
    private bool debugWayPoints = true;
    [SerializeField]
    private WayPointDebugType debugWayPointType = WayPointDebugType.SOLID;
    [SerializeField]
    private float debugWayPointSize = 0.2f;
    [SerializeField]
    private Color debugWayPointColour = Color.green;
    [Header("Track")]
    [SerializeField]
    private bool debugTrack = true;
    [SerializeField]
    [Range(0, 1)]
    private float debugTrackResolution = 0.04f;
    [SerializeField]
    private Color debugTrackColour = Color.red;

    [System.Serializable]
    private class SimpleWayPoint
    {
        public Vector3 pos;
        public float time;
    }

    [System.Serializable]
    private enum WayPointDebugType
    {
        SOLID,
        WIRE
    }

    private void Start()
    {
        wayPoints.Sort((x, y) =&gt; x.time.CompareTo(y.time));
        wayPoints.Insert(0, wayPoints[0]);
        wayPoints.Add(wayPoints[wayPoints.Count - 1]);
    }

    private void LateUpdate()
    {
        //This means that if currentTime is paused, then resumed, there is not a big jump in time
        if(runningBuffer != running)
        {
            runningBuffer = running;
            lastTime = Time.time;
        }

        if(running)
        {
            currentTime += (Time.time - lastTime) * timeModifier;
            lastTime = Time.time;
            if(currentTime &gt; wayPoints[wayPoints.Count - 1].time)
            {
                currentTime = 0;
            }
        }
        transform.position = GetPosition(currentTime);
    }

    #region Catmull-Rom Math
    public Vector3 GetPosition(float time)
    {
        //Check if before first waypoint
        if(time &lt;= wayPoints[0].time)
        {
            return wayPoints[0].pos;
        }
        //Check if after last waypoint
        else if(time &gt;= wayPoints[wayPoints.Count - 1].time)
        {
            return wayPoints[wayPoints.Count - 1].pos;
        }

        //Check time boundaries - Find the nearest WayPoint your object has passed
        float minTime = -1;
        float maxTime = -1;
        int minIndex = -1;
        for(int i = 1; i &lt; wayPoints.Count; i++)
        {
            if(time &gt; wayPoints[i - 1].time &amp;&amp; time &lt;= wayPoints[i].time)
            {
                maxTime = wayPoints[i].time;
                int index = i - 1;
                minTime = wayPoints[index].time;
                minIndex = index;
            }
        }

        float timeDiff = maxTime - minTime;
        float percentageThroughSegment = 1 - ((maxTime - time) / timeDiff);

        //Define the 4 points required to make a Catmull-Rom spline
        Vector3 p0 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(minIndex - 1)].pos;
        Vector3 p1 = wayPoints[minIndex].pos;
        Vector3 p2 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(minIndex + 1)].pos;
        Vector3 p3 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(minIndex + 2)].pos;

        return GetCatmullRomPosition(percentageThroughSegment, p0, p1, p2, p3, catmullRomAlpha);
    }

    //Prevent Index Out of Array Bounds
    private int ClampListPos(int pos)
    {
        if(pos &lt; 0)
        {
            pos = wayPoints.Count - 1;
        }

        if(pos &gt; wayPoints.Count)
        {
            pos = 1;
        }
        else if(pos &gt; wayPoints.Count - 1)
        {
            pos = 0;
        }

        return pos;
    }

    //Math behind the Catmull-Rom curve. See here for a good explanation of how it works. https://stackoverflow.com/a/23980479/4601149
    private Vector3 GetCatmullRomPosition(float t, Vector3 p0, Vector3 p1, Vector3 p2, Vector3 p3, float alpha)
    {
        float dt0 = GetTime(p0, p1, alpha);
        float dt1 = GetTime(p1, p2, alpha);
        float dt2 = GetTime(p2, p3, alpha);

        Vector3 t1 = ((p1 - p0) / dt0) - ((p2 - p0) / (dt0 + dt1)) + ((p2 - p1) / dt1);
        Vector3 t2 = ((p2 - p1) / dt1) - ((p3 - p1) / (dt1 + dt2)) + ((p3 - p2) / dt2);

        t1 *= dt1;
        t2 *= dt1;

        Vector3 c0 = p1;
        Vector3 c1 = t1;
        Vector3 c2 = (3 * p2) - (3 * p1) - (2 * t1) - t2;
        Vector3 c3 = (2 * p1) - (2 * p2) + t1 + t2;
        Vector3 pos = CalculatePosition(t, c0, c1, c2, c3);

        return pos;
    }

    private float GetTime(Vector3 p0, Vector3 p1, float alpha)
    {
        if(p0 == p1)
            return 1;
        return Mathf.Pow((p1 - p0).sqrMagnitude, 0.5f * alpha);
    }

    private Vector3 CalculatePosition(float t, Vector3 c0, Vector3 c1, Vector3 c2, Vector3 c3)
    {
        float t2 = t * t;
        float t3 = t2 * t;
        return c0 + c1 * t + c2 * t2 + c3 * t3;
    }

    //Utility method for drawing the track
    private void DisplayCatmullRomSpline(int pos, float resolution)
    {
        Vector3 p0 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(pos - 1)].pos;
        Vector3 p1 = wayPoints[pos].pos;
        Vector3 p2 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(pos + 1)].pos;
        Vector3 p3 = wayPoints[ClampListPos(pos + 2)].pos;

        Vector3 lastPos = p1;
        int maxLoopCount = Mathf.FloorToInt(1f / resolution);

        for(int i = 1; i &lt;= maxLoopCount; i++)
        {
            float t = i * resolution;
            Vector3 newPos = GetCatmullRomPosition(t, p0, p1, p2, p3, catmullRomAlpha);
            Gizmos.DrawLine(lastPos, newPos);
            lastPos = newPos;
        }
    }
    #endregion

    private void OnDrawGizmos()
    {
        #if UNITY_EDITOR
        if(EditorApplication.isPlaying)
        {
            if(debugWayPoints)
            {
                Gizmos.color = debugWayPointColour;
                foreach(SimpleWayPoint s in wayPoints)
                {
                    if(debugWayPointType == WayPointDebugType.SOLID)
                    {
                        Gizmos.DrawSphere(s.pos, debugWayPointSize);
                    }
                    else if(debugWayPointType == WayPointDebugType.WIRE)
                    {
                        Gizmos.DrawWireSphere(s.pos, debugWayPointSize);
                    }
                }
            }

            if(debugTrack)
            {
                Gizmos.color = debugTrackColour;
                if(wayPoints.Count &gt;= 2)
                {
                    for(int i = 0; i &lt; wayPoints.Count; i++)
                    {
                        if(i == 0 || i == wayPoints.Count - 2 || i == wayPoints.Count - 1)
                        {
                            continue;
                        }

                        DisplayCatmullRomSpline(i, debugTrackResolution);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        #endif
    }
}
</code></pre>
