Consistent Mouse Sensitivity (turning speed) Between FPS Games - Calcuator

sharknice

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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.
 
Interesting work. Can you explain what you mean by "dot"?

Your mouse sends data as Dots Per Inch (DPI). On the desktop and in 2D games 1 dot = 1 pixel, but in FPS games where you use the mouse to turn in 3D it doesn't translate to pixels, it turns your viewport by a certain number of degrees.
 
I always used the low-tech method of just sitting the mouse in the middle of the pad, moving it to the edge of the pad, and fiddling with the game sensitivity until that motion equals a 180-degree turn in-game. If you pull out a ruler that gives you a cm/360 measurement, give or take. But yeah the important thing is the feel stays the same.
 
Very interesting. I pretty much just play one FPS at a time because of this lol.
 
I always used the low-tech method of just sitting the mouse in the middle of the pad, moving it to the edge of the pad, and fiddling with the game sensitivity until that motion equals a 180-degree turn in-game. If you pull out a ruler that gives you a cm/360 measurement, give or take. But yeah the important thing is the feel stays the same.


using a ruler too. easiest method to stay consistent (at least if you don't use accel) since trying what you feel is a correct 180° turn can vary.
 
Trying to get serious with cs. Just got the steelseries rival optical mouse to start playing with 1 to 1 tracking and lower sensitivity. Gotta say though, I can't get even close to the low sensitivity the pros use.
 
This is awesome thanks. I was searching for exactly this a few weeks ago. Any chance you could share your auto hotkey macros? I play UT99, but I would like to try and find the exact sensitivity with and without DirectInput.
 
This is awesome thanks. I was searching for exactly this a few weeks ago. Any chance you could share your auto hotkey macros? I play UT99, but I would like to try and find the exact sensitivity with and without DirectInput.

Sorry I don't have them anymore. They were pretty easy to make though. I just searched around google for how to move the mouse and it was like one line with the X value.

Just be careful because some games have a maximum distance you can move at once, or are inconsistent if you set the value too high. I can't remember if UT99 had issues or not, but not using DirectInput might also affect that.
 
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