Does JavaScript provide a high resolution timer?

Question

I've written a few game engines from scratch, some in C, some in Java, and some in Flash. I always follow the same basic model when it comes to animations and interactive graphics. Create a basic class/structure with the following design:

void init() { /* Called once, preload essential resources here. */ }
void update(double time) { /* Updates game/animation state using high resolution time. */ }
void render(double time) { /* Updates screen graphics using high resolution time. */ }

void run()
{
    double time;
    init();
    while (!done)
    {
        time = queryTime();
        update(time);
        render(time);
    }
}

Time is so important to smooth animations and game state calculations. In native code Windows, I use QueryPerformanceCounter() and QueryPerformanceFrequency() to perform the role of queryTime() in each game loop and pass the time to update/render. In Java, I use System.nanoTime().

What's the equivalent in JavaScript? That is, some function like queryTime() which returns a time value with a high degree of accuracy (sub millisecond). From what I've heard the best accuracy you can get in JavaScript is about 15 ms ... which is horrible for animation.

user_418150 · Answer

Node supports nanoseconds via process.hrtime.bigint(), added in v10.7.0.

From the documentation:

The bigint version of the process.hrtime() method returning the current high-resolution real time in nanoseconds as a bigint.

Unlike process.hrtime(), it does not support an additional time argument since the difference can just be computed directly by subtraction of the two bigints.

import { hrtime } from 'process';

const start = hrtime.bigint();
// 191051479007711n

setTimeout(() => {
  const end = hrtime.bigint();
  // 191052633396993n

  console.log(`Benchmark took ${end - start} nanoseconds`);
  // Benchmark took 1154389282 nanoseconds
}, 1000);

Does JavaScript provide a high resolution timer?

11 Answers