Smooth Movement Issues with Processing 4

Question

I am writing a program where small 'birds' move around and follow your cursor. The instances don't rotate or anything fancy and I'm having a very unusual problem.

If the instance is on the same X-level or Y-level it oscillates. I've come across this problem with boundaries and movement before so I tried to take a similar approach.

void move() {
    
    if (xPos == mouseX) {
      xPos += 0;
    } else if (xPos < mouseX) {
      xPos += speed;
    } else {
      xPos -= speed;
    }
    
    if (yPos == mouseY) {
      yPos += 0;
    } else if (yPos < mouseY) {
      yPos += speed;
    } else {
      yPos -= speed;
    }

    xPos = (xPos > mouseX) ? xPos - speed : xPos + speed;
    yPos = (yPos > mouseY) ? yPos - speed : yPos + speed;
  }

The movement is only smooth when both versions run at the same time. I've tried rearranging the '>' and '<' signs to no avail.

Is there any part of this code I could remove to stop it repeating itself?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

The bird needs to move less when close to the axis. Try this:

if (abs(xPos - mouseX) < speed) {
  xPos = mouseX
} else if (xPos < mouseX) {
  xPos += speed;
} else {
  xPos -= speed;
}