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In Game Sensitivity - With diagram

C

Cattlegod

Diamond Member
I have been reading mixed reviews regarding mouse DPI and sensitivity that they don't really matter much and are completely interchangeable (I use an 800 DPI mouse right now with cranked up in game sensitivity). Currently when my crosshairs are on the right side of the guys head from a long distance, then if I move it to the left, it skips over and is now on the left side of the head. No in-between. It is almost like moving the crosshairs just enough to see the movement makes it skip some pixels. I believe this is because I have the sensitivity set high in the game.

Now, if I buy a high DPI mouse, (say I use 3200) and crank the in game sensitivity down by a factor of 4 (from 8 to 2 out of 10) to get the same response rate, I will have 4x more control in game, right? In the above example, if I am aiming at someone a long ways away and I before would move from the right of the head to the left with just one tick. With the higher DPI and lower in game sensitivity by a factor of 4, I would now have three additional stopping points.

My goal is to have extra stopping points with the same amount of distance moved on the mousepad.


Example (the dashes represent the Crosshair stop points on the second line, the above line represents the head):

Before Mouse DPI at 800, in game sensitivity set to 8/10 – headshot not possible

|_______________( o o )______________| < Target in the distance
|______--____________________--_____| < Crosshair stop points

After Mouse DPI at 3200, in game sensitivity set to 2/10 &#8211; headshot

|_______________( o o )______________| < Target in the distance
|______--____--____--____--____--_____| < Crosshair stop points - headshot



Am I completely off base and this is not how sensitivity and DPI work together? The above example the distance on the mousepad would be the same movement, which is what I am going for.
 
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I'm no expert, but I don't think you would have an issue with stopping points missing your target if you were using a high DPI optical mouse...

The only time I've had the problem you're describing was back in the 90's when using a ball mouse. Once I switched to laser and then optical mice I never noticed my cursor skipping over a target I wanted to hit.

Sounds like you just need to reduce the sensitivity of your mouse or the in game sensitivity a little. And get a gaming mousepad with a surface made specifically for optical or laser mice.
 
I don't know the mechanics, but last year I went from a MX518 (1600dpi) to a G9 (3200dpi) and loved the upgrade. Last weekend I got a G9x (5700dpi) dpi and I'm loving it even more.

If you're interested in the G9 let me know.
 
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The DPI as reported by the mouse control panel seems to be identical to sensitivity, at least from what I've seen. You're not actually changing anything in hardware, just how the mouse moves on the screen. Some mice do have a polling rate, which will make the mouse smoother or less smooth depending.

But yes, a low DPI mouse will skip over areas on the screen making it quite difficult to aim accurately.
 
Almost every FPS I play now I have the lowest sensitivity possible with high DPI. Makes for very smooth aiming. Your diagram is accurate. High sensitivity = more skipped pixels.
 
Great thread and good timing too. I recently upgraded from a 5 year old MX310 (800dpi) to a Diamondback 3G. I'm running the D3G also at 800 dpi with the sensitivity maxed out but will try the opposite. Some helpful information here.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. When doing research on the new mouse, I kept reading the same thing over and over:

Most professional gamers use a low DPI (800 or less), regardless of the mouse.
Click to expand...

I have no idea if this statement is accurate. Why do all these "professional" gamers run high end mice at the lower DPI? What's the advantage?
 
BlueWeasel said:
Great thread and good timing too. I recently upgraded from a 5 year old MX310 (800dpi) to a Diamondback 3G. I'm running the D3G also at 800 dpi with the sensitivity maxed out but will try the opposite. Some helpful information here.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. When doing research on the new mouse, I kept reading the same thing over and over:



I have no idea if this statement is accurate. Why do all these "professional" gamers run high end mice at the lower DPI? What's the advantage?
Click to expand...

Comments like you quoted are the reason I started this thread. I wanted to get verification that DPI actually did something if you reduce your in game sensitivity. I think they only use 800 dpi because they also have the sensitivity low. I 'think' the issue with professional gamers is they use HUGE desk space (hence the non need for high dpi when you use a 2 foot by 2 foot mousepad).
 
Cattlegod said:
Comments like you quoted are the reason I started this thread. I wanted to get verification that DPI actually did something if you reduce your in game sensitivity. I think they only use 800 dpi because they also have the sensitivity low. I 'think' the issue with professional gamers is they use HUGE desk space (hence the non need for high dpi when you use a 2 foot by 2 foot mousepad).
Click to expand...

Yeah good thread; your diagram in the original post is how I figured it worked. I don't usually have sniping issues with that though so I haven't bothered upgrading.
 
How small would the head have to be for the 800 DPI mouse to skip over it? According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch

Dots per inch (DPI) is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 in (2.54 cm).
Click to expand...

...so, the head you are trying to hit would have to smaller 1/800" for this to happen:

Before Mouse DPI at 800, in game sensitivity set to 8/10 – headshot not possible

|_______________( o o )______________| < Target in the distance
|______--____________________--_____| < Crosshair stop points
Click to expand...

I don't know how the sensitivity is measured or what it actually is, but if making adjustments causes you to skip over the head I'm guessing it would be the sensitivity that is causing the problem and not the DPI. ...or mouse DPI is not measured the same way as print DPI.
 
When I used to use pro gamer's configs back in cs days, they all had super low sens. I guess its for the super precise aiming and they're used to it.
 
What you want is to set the game sensitivity to 1 to obtain pixel to pixel mapping without interpolation. Then you adjust your mouse sensitivity using DPI on your mouse.

You also need to make sure you have your windows sensitivity at default of 6/11, otherwise windows interpolates the mouse request. Lower = pixels discarded, higher = pixels skipped.

Also mind that some games do not disable interpolation at 1, but somewhere in the middle, like lets say sensitivity scale is 1-20, 1:1 mapping might be at 10. You have to do research to find this out.
 
Regarding the Windows sensitivity setting (in Control Panel), does the 6/11 setting apply regardless of OS?

I've heard about that setting in XP, but was unsure if it was the same for Vista or Win7.
 
I used an MX300, and considered myself a progamer back in high school, tournements and the such.

I always used low sens, IE 1-1.1 in any FPS.
 
You know, when playing CS back in the day, I always felt I had much finer aim with my ball mouse than with a laser... Just had to clean the rollers now and then (which was fun, actually!) 🙂
 
BlueWeasel said:
Why do all these "professional" gamers run high end mice at the lower DPI? What's the advantage?
Click to expand...

The better FPS players I've seen use larger mouse pads and use larger arm swings to move around in-game. I think the benefit of this is that you can much more precise with your accuracy.

I move my mouse about 2"-2.5" and cross the entire screen (good for what I like, but not for pro gaming probably).
 
Liet said:
You know, when playing CS back in the day, I always felt I had much finer aim with my ball mouse than with a laser... Just had to clean the rollers now and then (which was fun, actually!) 🙂
Click to expand...

I have some solid gold HDMI and DVI cables to sell you if you would like. They will maximize your display experience like none other.
 
Liet said:
You know, when playing CS back in the day, I always felt I had much finer aim with my ball mouse than with a laser... Just had to clean the rollers now and then (which was fun, actually!) 🙂
Click to expand...

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that enjoyed cleaning out the rollers on old ball mice, lol. It was like an OCD tick for me, every time I used a ball mouse I hadn't used before I had to check to see if it needed to be cleaned out.

Yeah, yeah...don't judge me. 😛
 
Sounds like you need one of these:

rat9-ces.png


That button under the thumb apparently tanks the DPI setting, or as the article states, "It's a sniper button!!!"
 
nitromullet said:
And I stopped reading half way through the first sentence.
Click to expand...
In all honesty, the review is quite kind though. They said the mouse felt quite good in performance and comfort, and was entirely adjustable in many, many ways. Being made from steel gives me hope that it won't break in two seconds, like most Mad Katz products do...
 
JAG87 said:
What you want is to set the game sensitivity to 1 to obtain pixel to pixel mapping without interpolation. Then you adjust your mouse sensitivity using DPI on your mouse.

You also need to make sure you have your windows sensitivity at default of 6/11, otherwise windows interpolates the mouse request. Lower = pixels discarded, higher = pixels skipped.

Also mind that some games do not disable interpolation at 1, but somewhere in the middle, like lets say sensitivity scale is 1-20, 1:1 mapping might be at 10. You have to do research to find this out.
Click to expand...

+1.

This is spot on. Don't use mouse acceleration, keep the windows sesitivity at 6/11 (default), and use higher DPI if you want to increase the speed of your cursor when moving the mouse. Ideally you want 1:1 mapping, in order for the pixel to pixel mapping.

The goal is to be able to move the mouse a certain distance at any speed, and have the cursor always stop at the same point on screen. You want to avoid re-adjusting your aim from twitching your mouse and having the acceleration take the cursor across the whole screen instead of just 1 inch to get the headshot.
 
I don't know how this works with newer games, Win Vista, and mouse-smoothing, but I can confirm without a doubt in early quake engine titles (including HL1) on Win 98 your hypothesis is correct.

Increasing in game sensitivity back then would cause the cross hair to effectively "jump" pixels. I tested it out with software that would simulate mouse inputs back in college ('98- '99 academic year I believe).

Back then the solution was to bind your weapon change keys into macros that would also change your sensitivity. Sniper/Railgun, Rocket Launcher, Shotgun examples below.

BIND keyboard8 mousespeed 1, selectweapon 8
BIND keyboard6 mousespeed 2, selectweapon 6
BIND keyboard3 mousespeed 4, selectweapon 3

Increasing mouse polling time helped some, effectively increasing "ball" mice sensitivity. But polling increases sometimes caused other strange issues and didn't work for every game depending on input API.

These days... I run high DPI mice with on the fly DPI changing and set sensitivity in game either as low as it can go, or just a single notch up. I don't know if it's still the case, but I know that will help if I ever boot up Quake2 again.
 
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