sharknice
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2012
- Messages
- 3,729
I did some research and made a tool that allows you to figure out how to set your in-game sensitivity and mouse DPS so you get the same turning speed for every FPS game. I originally just figured out all of this information for myself but I figured other people would find this helpful so I added it to my website.
Tool Here: http://eliteownage.com/mousesensitivity.html
Consistent mouse looking between games makes it so your body does not need to adjust when switching games. Consistent mouse aiming will improve your accuracy, reaction time, and confidence in every game you play.
It used to be that to get consistent looking speed between games you would basically just have to manually adjust until it felt the same. I decided to get scientific and figured out the math and did some measurements. The website will do all of the calculations for you and has a table with the measurements I did for each game.
Note: All of these measurements were done using direct mouse input with no mouse acceleration or smoothing. If you use mouse acceleration you'll have to keep your mouse DPI the same between games to keep it consistent. If you don't use acceleration you can change in-game sensitivity or DPI and it will be consistent.
How I did the calculations
I set the in-game sensitivity to 1.0 then in the game I would look at a reference point and turn horizontally until I did a full 360 degree turn, measuring how many "dots" it took to do that turn. At first I did this manually by setting my DPI to 1000 then multiplying the number of inches I moved my mouse, but this wasn't accurate enough for my liking. So I setup some macros using Autohotkey so that with a button press I could move the mouse an exact number of dots horizontally.
This measurement gave the number of Dots Per 360 Degree Turn which is what you need to do the calculations to keep everything consistent between games.
I did these calculations for every game I have installed and put the values in a table. Every Source game uses the same values including the original Half-Life engine games. That includes all the Half-Lifes, Counter-Strikes, Team Fortresses, Portals, Left 4 Deads, etc. I had about 10 other games installed that I did measurements for. If you have a game that isn't on the list it would be great if you could do measurements and post them in this thread so I can add them to the table.
To figure out the DPI to set your mouse to for each game use this equation
DPI = (dots per 360 degree turn/sensitivity)/inches per 360 degree turn
or if you want to keep your DPI the same and just change your sensitivity:
sensitivity = (dots per 360 degree turn/DPI)/inches per 360 degree turn
The site has a calculator so you can just enter values in and it will do this calculation for you.
Other Findings
When I was using the autohotkey macros to move the mouse an interesting thing I found was that many games limit the maximum turning speed. For example I had a hotkey that would move the mouse 1000 dots but the game would only turn it 100 dots worth of input. So when doing my calculations I would have to set the macro to a lower value and count the number of times needed to press it to do the 360 degree turn. The maximum value seemed be high enough that in normal gaming it wouldn't be an issue unless you were getting slide-show like framerate, it just made calculations more of a hassle.
The Battlefield 4 beta had inconsistent results for different in-game sensitivities, the sensitivity values are not linear. 2% is not double 1% like all the other games I tested. I added the values to the table I had for 1% sensitivity, so the calculator won't work correctly for this game unless you use 1%. Battlefield 4 and older battlefield games do a lot of weird things with mouse turning and have different turning speeds depending what vehicle you're driving and other weird things.
Tool Here: http://eliteownage.com/mousesensitivity.html
Consistent mouse looking between games makes it so your body does not need to adjust when switching games. Consistent mouse aiming will improve your accuracy, reaction time, and confidence in every game you play.
It used to be that to get consistent looking speed between games you would basically just have to manually adjust until it felt the same. I decided to get scientific and figured out the math and did some measurements. The website will do all of the calculations for you and has a table with the measurements I did for each game.
Note: All of these measurements were done using direct mouse input with no mouse acceleration or smoothing. If you use mouse acceleration you'll have to keep your mouse DPI the same between games to keep it consistent. If you don't use acceleration you can change in-game sensitivity or DPI and it will be consistent.
How I did the calculations
I set the in-game sensitivity to 1.0 then in the game I would look at a reference point and turn horizontally until I did a full 360 degree turn, measuring how many "dots" it took to do that turn. At first I did this manually by setting my DPI to 1000 then multiplying the number of inches I moved my mouse, but this wasn't accurate enough for my liking. So I setup some macros using Autohotkey so that with a button press I could move the mouse an exact number of dots horizontally.
This measurement gave the number of Dots Per 360 Degree Turn which is what you need to do the calculations to keep everything consistent between games.
I did these calculations for every game I have installed and put the values in a table. Every Source game uses the same values including the original Half-Life engine games. That includes all the Half-Lifes, Counter-Strikes, Team Fortresses, Portals, Left 4 Deads, etc. I had about 10 other games installed that I did measurements for. If you have a game that isn't on the list it would be great if you could do measurements and post them in this thread so I can add them to the table.
To figure out the DPI to set your mouse to for each game use this equation
DPI = (dots per 360 degree turn/sensitivity)/inches per 360 degree turn
or if you want to keep your DPI the same and just change your sensitivity:
sensitivity = (dots per 360 degree turn/DPI)/inches per 360 degree turn
The site has a calculator so you can just enter values in and it will do this calculation for you.
Other Findings
When I was using the autohotkey macros to move the mouse an interesting thing I found was that many games limit the maximum turning speed. For example I had a hotkey that would move the mouse 1000 dots but the game would only turn it 100 dots worth of input. So when doing my calculations I would have to set the macro to a lower value and count the number of times needed to press it to do the 360 degree turn. The maximum value seemed be high enough that in normal gaming it wouldn't be an issue unless you were getting slide-show like framerate, it just made calculations more of a hassle.
The Battlefield 4 beta had inconsistent results for different in-game sensitivities, the sensitivity values are not linear. 2% is not double 1% like all the other games I tested. I added the values to the table I had for 1% sensitivity, so the calculator won't work correctly for this game unless you use 1%. Battlefield 4 and older battlefield games do a lot of weird things with mouse turning and have different turning speeds depending what vehicle you're driving and other weird things.