Is Time.deltaTime consistent across different platforms/devices?

Questions & Answers
1

The game I’m working on keeps track of the time it takes to complete a level, which is sent to the Leaderboards. The plan is to just have a global Leaderboard across all platforms since that’ll result in more scores/competition/whatever.

Currently, I’m keeping track of game time using the following code:

void Update()
{
    CompletionTime += Time.deltaTime;
}

A few questions have popped up that I’m not entirely sure about:

  1. Will this be handled exactly the same across all platforms? FPS doesn’t change on a per-platform basis does it?
  2. What happens if the game starts running slow (slower device, framerate glitch, etc.)? A longer frame will result in a greater deltaTime so that should also remain consistent whether the game runs buttery smooth or really slow.
  3. Is Time.deltaTime appropriate for this? Should I just grab the ‘Time.time’ when the game completes instead?
2

  1. no, FPS does differ hugely among devices, even on the same device it will differ.

  2. if your games runs slower deltaTime will increase, but as there are equally less calls to the update function the time measurement will be the same. That’s basically the idea of deltaTime, to adjust for different framerates.

  3. Time.time would be much more adequate, no need to waste resources on deltaTime in the update function, as you don’t really need it. Check this answer.