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Which should Iower: dpi or sensitivity?

P

Prozac1964

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
309
This question applies to first person shooters mainly. I've got a small problem concerning the settings on my Logitech G500 mouse. I recently raised my dpi to the max 5700dpi just to see how it would play. Of course I had to lower my sensitivity to compensate because the higher dpi was much faster.

But even when I lowered the in game sens, my crosshair was still a bit shaky. I'm wondering if there is a happy medium, and I'm wondering if - as I lower my dpi to find the sweet spot - will the crosshair become more stable?

My original setting was 2000 dpi..

Thanks for any help. :D
 
Very small movements are being sensed by the heightened DPI setting, I assume. It is probably wisest for you to gear back your DPI a bit and, then, adjust your sensitivity accordingly. My maximum and typical DPI setting is only 3500, on a gaming mouse, which lends itself to plenty of accuracy, so you have some room to play with. The erratic behavior of your pointer could be rooted in a problem with the contact of your mouse on your mousing surface, the jitteriness of your hand, or a similar problem, but it is going to be detected directly by the DPI setting of the mouse. The sensitivity will, then, in turn, either amplify or deamplify that shakiness.

Basically, either mouse more smoothly or reduce your DPI. Adjusting your sensitivity setting to remedy the shakiness is a generally unwise solution.
 
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Very nice info. I appreciate it and will give it a try. It's so nice to find solutions.

Thanks Starcrossed. :)
 
What I do is set the Windows mouse sensitivity to the 6th notch (as everyone should do), disable all mouse smoothing, acceleration, enhanced precision, etc., and I set the mouse DPI to a level that I find comfortable in Windows (generally between 1400 and 1800 depending on the mouse). Then, when I play a game I change the game-specific sensitivity setting until it's at the right level for me. That way, I don't ever have to touch the DPI setting on my mouse, and when I play a game I only have to adjust the sensitivity once and it'll be fine from that point on.
 
I scaled the DPI back a click on my G500 because otherwise the sensitivity in a lot of FPS games was still too high even if the setting was as low as possible. I don't understand why it's so hard for developers to include a fine-tuning numerical value for mouse sensitivity like a lot of (all?) games that use the Source engine. DEATH TO THE AMBIGUOUS SLIDER.
 
highest DPI, then taper in game sens accordingly. ALWAYS have windows settings 6/11
 
Generally speaking it's preferable to have the mouse reading as accurate as possible so the raw data you're working with is high quality, then scale back the sensitivity in software, preferably in the game and not in windows, in windows set your mouse slider to be in the middle to get clean 1:1 mapping.

If windows is too sensitive with 1:1 mouse movement I'd use a DPI switcher between that and games, the lachesis mouse I use has a DPI toggle up/down button and I just move that to max when I load a game and then back down a bit for windows.
 
competitively I run low dpi medium sensitivty

800DPI
3xwindows sensitivity
Ingame depends
 
set your ingame sens to 1 then adjust your dpi on your mouse to what feel confiterbal.

then just use sens 1 on all your games
 
GDstew4 said:
I scaled the DPI back a click on my G500 because otherwise the sensitivity in a lot of FPS games was still too high even if the setting was as low as possible. I don't understand why it's so hard for developers to include a fine-tuning numerical value for mouse sensitivity like a lot of (all?) games that use the Source engine. DEATH TO THE AMBIGUOUS SLIDER.
Click to expand...
yes seriously! its so annoying that my Steam games doesnt support a sensitivity low enough for my DPI setting
 
piscian18 said:
competitively I run low dpi medium sensitivty

800DPI
3xwindows sensitivity
Ingame depends
Click to expand...

:eek: What game be this, at what resolution? I feel like i'm waay too high now (I suppose you must use a different style)

I have a 5 variable rate DPI mouse, but usually typically use a high medium and low. For normal FPS I use speed 6 then 200, 1600, 3200 (sniper, normal and quick turn) and no accelaration then tune the sensitivity slightly until I don't shake so much.

The sensitivity is like the fine tuning, and the DPI should be a rough estimate, especially as not all games work quite the same (if you can't set profiles). For Defrag/twitch shooters I tend to use higher DPI so I don't have to make as big movements, and so on.
 
DeathPrincess said:
:eek: What game be this, at what resolution? I feel like i'm waay too high now (I suppose you must use a different style)

I have a 5 variable rate DPI mouse, but usually typically use a high medium and low. For normal FPS I use speed 6 then 200, 1600, 3200 (sniper, normal and quick turn) and no accelaration then tune the sensitivity slightly until I don't shake so much.

The sensitivity is like the fine tuning, and the DPI should be a rough estimate, especially as not all games work quite the same (if you can't set profiles). For Defrag/twitch shooters I tend to use higher DPI so I don't have to make as big movements, and so on.
Click to expand...

Counter-strike, CoD4, TF2, Battlefield etc. Though I only play for a Counter-strike source team at the moment.

1920x1200 16:10

and yes I use my arm over my wrist

I don't squat or sit still to snipe I aim> zoom>shoot in one go then rotate position so my sensitivity doesn't change between modes.
 
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Yeah, in Oblivion (probably many games), the crosshairs would jump several pixels at a time when the sensitivity is not low. No matter how slow I moved the mouse, it made size-able jumps. There was no fine pixel by pixel sliding movement. I think that's why you want the sensitivity as low as reasonably possible.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Generally speaking it's preferable to have the mouse reading as accurate as possible so the raw data you're working with is high quality, then scale back the sensitivity in software, preferably in the game and not in windows, in windows set your mouse slider to be in the middle to get clean 1:1 mapping.

If windows is too sensitive with 1:1 mouse movement I'd use a DPI switcher between that and games, the lachesis mouse I use has a DPI toggle up/down button and I just move that to max when I load a game and then back down a bit for windows.
Click to expand...

The problem here is that too many gamers are high sensitivity gamers, making high DPI settings lead to a very shaky mouse. If you want to keep the high DPI, back off your sensitivity some more. You'll be far more accurate in the end.
 
Shakiness is caused by very small mouse movements becoming directly detected by the DPI setting of the mouse. To further increase your accuracy, you either need to mouse more smoothly or/and lower the DPI to the point of losing the erratic behavior. If you merely use your sensitivity setting, the jiggle will be deamplified, but it will still exist and reduce mousing accuracy.

Having a mouse become so accurate that it is affected by, say, a human pulse, actually makes the mouse cursor less accurate. You want to find the threshold between having a very accurate mouse, but not so accurate that it introduces "fuzz" into the mathematical system that determines cursor movement. Do not be afraid of reducing your DPI down a bit from a very highly accurate 5900 DPI, in order to take chaos out of the system. Else you may have to hold your breath, for real, every time you take a sniper shot in a game. ;)

Truth be told, a player should generally learn to play on gradually increasing accuracies. A novice archer is more accurate with a beginner bow than an expert bow that registers all of her or his excess and subtle movements.

DPI is the mouse's accuracy in sensing movements, while sensitivity is the amplification or deamplification of the mouse's registered movements.
 
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I'm using my G700 at MAX DPI and I noticed more shaky mouse movements than when using my Mamba. I noticed my sensitivity was at 5 on setpoint. I put it at 4 and it helps the shakiness to the point I don't notice it anymore.

As a rule, like others have said... I prefer to set my DPI at highest point and then change sensitivity in the game. That way I know my mouse is running at highest resolution.

I also like to train myself to be quicker so I don't mind learning this way of "mousing."
 
Thanks everyone who contributed to this thread. Well, here is what I've concluded: I know the opinions on mouse dpi and sens are varied, but I fall on the side of lowering the dpi.

I lowered my dpi from 5700 to 2900 and bumped my sens from 0.40 to 0.70 and found a sweet spot that I like. At 5700 the targets were very crisp but because it registered every tiny movement of my hand, I wasn't as accurate. At 2900 the targets seem less sharp, but only by a small amount and once I bumped my sens, every movement was smoother. So this solves the problem for me. Yeah! :cool:

Thx again, Prozac :)
PS: I'm an old school gamer, and all of this tweaking was to improve my accuracy in the game Unreal Tournament 2004, and I've been playing much better because I dialed in my mouse.
 
I used to use a really high sensitivity with my high DPI mice, about 1-2 inches for a 360 degree turn, recently playing with friends in BC2 I've swapped to a much lower sensitivity though.

BC2 is funny, you can use a lot of the guns, even the SMGs like the Uzi, to essentially snipe with, if you tap the fire button you can clonk people at massive ranges. I had this daft setup with the uzi and a red dot scope and magnum ammo, Rambo around sniping people, funny as hell.

Depends on the game, twitch shooters I prefer much higher sensitivity, where speed is key.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
BC2 is funny, you can use a lot of the guns, even the SMGs like the Uzi, to essentially snipe with, if you tap the fire button you can clonk people at massive ranges. I had this daft setup with the uzi and a red dot scope and magnum ammo, Rambo around sniping people, funny as hell.
Click to expand...

I MUST play this game, sounds like fun, and I love sniping. :D :cool:
 
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