"Regarding yesterday's popular complaint post that upping the scan rate breaks part of the game: I actually did the math, and the change has almost no effect at all."

#PokemonGO: Edit: I originally made this post with an incorrect 70m range taken from the original complaint. I have since updated it to use the correct 40m range that pokemon are catchable within. If you use a 70m distance, there is only a 2.4% change in covered area at 13.4 mph.Niantic changed the scanner to update every 10 seconds instead of every 5 seconds. In this post, a user who says he couldn't be bothered to actually do the math bemoans the fact that this breaks the game for cyclists, as the slower scans will cause you to miss a huge number of pokemon while travelling at cycling speeds. That post became immensely popular despite being completely wrong.I did the math that nobody else bothered to do, and the result is that it is a very small change at any speeds below 15 mph (about 7 m/s). Consider travelling at 13.4 mph (6 m/s, over the speed referenced in the original complaint). If scanning were perfect and had no time gaps, you would sweep a rectangle with an area of 4,800 m2 over the course of 10 seconds of movement. With 5 seconds between scans, the circles cover 4,685 m2, which is 97.6% of the perfect area. With 10 seconds between scans, your scan circles cover 4,301 m2, which is 89.6% of the perfect area. Comparing between the two rates, at 13.4 mph, you cover 92% as much area with 10-second scans as you do with 5-second scans. Losing 8% of your previously covered area hardly "breaks the game," "makes it extremely unlikely to encounter wild Pokemon," or makes it difficult to encounter "anything that's not directly in front of you."Here is an image showing the difference between 10-second scans and 5-second scans at 13.4 mph. The slivers of green are missed by both sets of scans. The spots of red are the only areas that used to be hit by 5-second scans that are now missed by 10-second scans.Here is a graph showing how coverage compares at different speeds. The chart shows how much area 10-second scans cover as a fraction of 5-second scans. At 0 mph, you cover the exact same area regardless of time, so 10-second scans cover 100% as much as 5-second scans. It isn't until you get up to roughly 15 mph that 10-second scans cover 10% less area than scanning every 5 seconds. And at 35 mph or faster, you are going fast enough that 5-second scans will not overlap each other at all (and obviously slower scans won't overlap either), so scanning half as often gets you exactly half the coverage.tldr: Going from scanning every 5 seconds to scanning every 10 seconds is a big change for people who play in cars (which is probably intentional), but it has only a small effect on cyclists. Even at 15 mph (which is already faster than the fastest speed that counts for egg hatching) you'll barely see a 10% reduction in pokemon encounters. You won't get a drop of 25% until over 20 mph, and the full 50% reduction doesn't become apparent until you're going over 30 mph. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2aR2YWl