For centuries man has been plauged, hindered by the inadequacies of his own tools. Mice have been reluctant to match the cabalities of the fort which forms a gamers body, a vertiable pastige of godly sensibilties and attributes - We have, in every way, surpased our own creations. Enough of the foonr style, over emphasised, badly written drivel.
I've written this column after considering some of the comments in mztiks article. Most of you might have realised the conclusions i'll draw already, and to you I apologise, but to those who have not, I hope you learn something. I've decided in writing a column, rather than a journal, because I believe this information will be important in the debunking of many "DPI improve ur aim" and "DPI is god" claims.
Originally this was a very long column, I'm going to abridge it and try to condense the information into an xfire friendly format.
Optical mice work by taking pictures of your mousepad, finding a refference point or two, then taking another picture some time later and comparing the positions of the refference points. From the change in distance, and using the time taken (1 divided by the frame capture rate), a speed can be found. This speed is the represented on your screen.
DPI stands for dots per inch. It is the details of a picture, it has nothing to do with the actual size of the object who's image was taken. It simply increases the detail, I can't emphasise that enough.
Since the mouse works by taking images at a certain rate per second, and because it's almost impossible not to find a good refference point on a modern mouse pad, the only things which affect the feel of the mouse are:
The Frames per second
The size of the image.
(Notice that DPI isn't even mentioned)
If either of these values isn't large enough, you can experience choppy movement, no movement, or negative accel at high speeds (negative accel is more of a bandwidth / ingame input problem however).
A low size of image could mean that, if the mouse is moved fast enough, a refference frame will competely dissapear from the perspective of the mouse, leaving it with only half the information it needs to complete its calculations.
A low fps will mean that not enough images are captured, and even low speeds will escape the maximum distance threshold before a new image is taken.
However, we should now consider 2 examples - The mouse which takes a 1m squared image at 1fps, and the mouse which takes a 0.01m image at 100 fps. Both of their max speeds are 1m/s, but how would they perform when used in a real world setting.
Well, the 0.01m mouse will not have any problems finding refference frames, so that isn't a problem. The 1m mouse however will produce a flat velocity line. Whe i'ts moved 1m, even it it's moved 1m in 0.1 seconds, then left to sit there, it will still take 1 second for the entire input to be recieved, and it will still create an oncreen movement of a flat velocity of 1 m/s, completely discgarding the accelleration the user applied.
The 0.01m mouse will be taking 100 images a second, however, and so even a movement over 1/100 of a second will be recorded, and it will only take 1/100 a second for the input to be relayed onto the screen.
Basically this all confirms the age old gaming myth, more fps = better. Now you have to notice 1 odd thing, one very odd thing: if FPS is so good for your mouse, why do neither razer nor logitech, the premier developers of gaming mice, pimp the fps of their mice?
Well, the fact that fps has't improved in 6 years might be a clue. But beyond, it is most likely a much more costly option to create high fps mice - The cost of high dpi sensors has been reduced greatly over the years (Camera phones, etc), so it makes sense that they'd be improving in that area, but high fps cameras (like those used for slow motion) are still expensive.
The point of this article is simple to relieve you of the burdon of ignorance: 400 DPI is more than enough, the smoothness you think you gain from more is almost entirely placebo - You should be looking for mice with the highest fps.
I've written this column after considering some of the comments in mztiks article. Most of you might have realised the conclusions i'll draw already, and to you I apologise, but to those who have not, I hope you learn something. I've decided in writing a column, rather than a journal, because I believe this information will be important in the debunking of many "DPI improve ur aim" and "DPI is god" claims.
Originally this was a very long column, I'm going to abridge it and try to condense the information into an xfire friendly format.
Optical mice work by taking pictures of your mousepad, finding a refference point or two, then taking another picture some time later and comparing the positions of the refference points. From the change in distance, and using the time taken (1 divided by the frame capture rate), a speed can be found. This speed is the represented on your screen.
DPI stands for dots per inch. It is the details of a picture, it has nothing to do with the actual size of the object who's image was taken. It simply increases the detail, I can't emphasise that enough.
Since the mouse works by taking images at a certain rate per second, and because it's almost impossible not to find a good refference point on a modern mouse pad, the only things which affect the feel of the mouse are:
The Frames per second
The size of the image.
(Notice that DPI isn't even mentioned)
If either of these values isn't large enough, you can experience choppy movement, no movement, or negative accel at high speeds (negative accel is more of a bandwidth / ingame input problem however).
A low size of image could mean that, if the mouse is moved fast enough, a refference frame will competely dissapear from the perspective of the mouse, leaving it with only half the information it needs to complete its calculations.
A low fps will mean that not enough images are captured, and even low speeds will escape the maximum distance threshold before a new image is taken.
However, we should now consider 2 examples - The mouse which takes a 1m squared image at 1fps, and the mouse which takes a 0.01m image at 100 fps. Both of their max speeds are 1m/s, but how would they perform when used in a real world setting.
Well, the 0.01m mouse will not have any problems finding refference frames, so that isn't a problem. The 1m mouse however will produce a flat velocity line. Whe i'ts moved 1m, even it it's moved 1m in 0.1 seconds, then left to sit there, it will still take 1 second for the entire input to be recieved, and it will still create an oncreen movement of a flat velocity of 1 m/s, completely discgarding the accelleration the user applied.
The 0.01m mouse will be taking 100 images a second, however, and so even a movement over 1/100 of a second will be recorded, and it will only take 1/100 a second for the input to be relayed onto the screen.
Basically this all confirms the age old gaming myth, more fps = better. Now you have to notice 1 odd thing, one very odd thing: if FPS is so good for your mouse, why do neither razer nor logitech, the premier developers of gaming mice, pimp the fps of their mice?
Well, the fact that fps has't improved in 6 years might be a clue. But beyond, it is most likely a much more costly option to create high fps mice - The cost of high dpi sensors has been reduced greatly over the years (Camera phones, etc), so it makes sense that they'd be improving in that area, but high fps cameras (like those used for slow motion) are still expensive.
The point of this article is simple to relieve you of the burdon of ignorance: 400 DPI is more than enough, the smoothness you think you gain from more is almost entirely placebo - You should be looking for mice with the highest fps.
Ripped off ESR, the guy is absolutly right although i doesnt affect 99% of the ET community, maybe Danone with his sens 7 :P