Hello everyone. We have all used the Digital Dice Roller at some point and for some it's a wonderful feature that works with little issue.

  However, some like myself having tried all that has been suggested and more, find the D.D.R. still visually "Sluggish".

  While I'm sure the Dev Team has put a significant amount of time into it's random number generation codebase, and it's visual trueness based on user feedback, they may have overdone it. ( See Note at the bottom of post. )

  Myself and others would like to see an option to toggle the "Animation" of the dice ON or OFF, and with the animation "OFF" just simply have the result of a "Random" roll be displayed and logged. 

here is a direct link to the feedback portal for the Digital Dice, specifically the turning off of the dice and getting a quick result:

https://portal.productboard.com/f4sdlxyuicwxvay5awizcssp/c/270-turn-off-3d-dice-rolling?utm_medium=social&utm_source=portal_share

The poll is simple:  Vote YES to see an option to turn DDR "Animation" ON or OFF. Vote NO if you just don't care.  

( NOTE : while I have no idea how DDB devs coded the DDR, I have been told it uses a "Physics Simulation" to generate the random number(s). the "Animation" is just the visual recreation of that "Simulation". The Simulator calculates direction vectors, rotation angles, and surface interaction. This is to give them a "Real" feel, and "look" while rolling on screen. While it is an innovative solution, for some it is pure overkill. 

  Pseudo-RNG algorithms have gotten better. Sometimes less is more. ) 

While it's nice to see D&DBeyond update their user feedback system, and would suggest readers at give it a look and leave comments on what they would like to see the DDB teams work on, to some it may seem out of the way to have to voice their opinion. Here I offer a second choice.

Quote from Davyd >>

There were a lot of factors the team considered when it comes to digital dice and some of the feedback that came to the top was:

• The dice should feel real and not just be some numbers on a screen
• The dice should be reliably random as proper randomness matters when it comes to D&D
• The dice should be usable offline

The solution to those three goals was the dice we have; physics based dice.

A lot of offline pRNG (pseudo-random number generators) use a complicated algorithm and a seed value to produce some kind of random output. This is okay, but will produce the same output if the seed value is the same. Basically it has the lowest rating of reliable randomness. So the team took a different approach; still starting with a seed value, this is used to determine the initial velocity of a physically simulated dice. Due to the way physics models work (with their own built in pRNGs for things like friction coefficients and the like), even if you plug in the same seed value, you can get different outcomes. So this gives dice that 'feel' real, are reliably random, and work offline.

Obviously the limitation is the 'animation' (not actually an animation, but a physics simulation). Services such as roll20 and avrae can be instant because they can query very large online databases of very random numbers, saving time. But in order to preserve offline functionality, DDB can't skip the physics sim to query such a service. Simply speeding up the simulation would put more strain on the browser/device.

However, the team is aware of the desire for quicker/instant dice rolling and I can only assume options are being considered

 ( This was a response that was given on another thread I had posted )

Understandable, though as has been noted within other post, if multiple dice are "Simulated" then a relative bottleneck occurs when the "Animation" is forced to wait on certain results of the sim. ( and possibly vice-versa )

  With the ability to turn off the "animation", two things may be possible:

1.) the physics sim has full use of resources to complete it's run and the final position of the dice ( aka the random number{s}) can be quickly obtained,  then displayed, without the possible bottle-necking from having to display the die's position in every moment of the sim's calculation.

or

2) A Peudo-RNG could be used, bypassing the taxing sim and animation, and the result displayed. { the reason I offer this is because the probability of same seed occurrence with even 6 year old tech ( as an extreme example ), and advancement with PRNG algorithms is negligent even within a extended time of usage. }

As I had stated, those who wish to have the "Animation" ON would still receive a rich and exciting experience in urging and watching their dice come to a stop. While those who would have the "Animation" OFF, would simply get the message of what they rolled. 

  AS I have no idea of the depth of code involved with the Dice Roller, I would think adding an ON/OFF toggle and some simple IF..THEN code that points to one option or the other would seem like one possible way this could be considered.

 The DDB team has recently put out a request for 3D dice artist. Hopefully, while working on that they find the time to address the feedback in the portal. So far, request for simplifying the rolls of the digital dice appear to be greater than any-other request.