Calculating frames per second in a game

What's a good algorithm for calculating frames per second in a game? I want to show it as a number in the corner of the screen. If I just look at how long it took to render the last frame the number changes too fast.

Bonus points if your answer updates each frame and doesn't converge differently when the frame rate is increasing vs decreasing.

Solution 1:

You need a smoothed average, the easiest way is to take the current answer (the time to draw the last frame) and combine it with the previous answer.

// eg.
float smoothing = 0.9; // larger=more smoothing
measurement = (measurement * smoothing) + (current * (1.0-smoothing))

By adjusting the 0.9 / 0.1 ratio you can change the 'time constant' - that is how quickly the number responds to changes. A larger fraction in favour of the old answer gives a slower smoother change, a large fraction in favour of the new answer gives a quicker changing value. Obviously the two factors must add to one!

Solution 2:

This is what I have used in many games.

#define MAXSAMPLES 100
int tickindex=0;
int ticksum=0;
int ticklist[MAXSAMPLES];

/* need to zero out the ticklist array before starting */
/* average will ramp up until the buffer is full */
/* returns average ticks per frame over the MAXSAMPLES last frames */

double CalcAverageTick(int newtick)
{
    ticksum-=ticklist[tickindex];  /* subtract value falling off */
    ticksum+=newtick;              /* add new value */
    ticklist[tickindex]=newtick;   /* save new value so it can be subtracted later */
    if(++tickindex==MAXSAMPLES)    /* inc buffer index */
        tickindex=0;

    /* return average */
    return((double)ticksum/MAXSAMPLES);
}