Sensitivity vs Precision

[GeneralScott]

I find that when setting the sensitivity for my new computer, when I get to a high enough sensitivity to be playable the mouse sort of "jumps" instead of smoothly and accurately moves. This means my accuracy is lacking at range, because I literally "can't" aim at something due to the mouse jumping over it. Will a better dpi mouse increase precision with the same sensitivity? Or will the imprecise aiming be an issue if you increase the sensitivity for all mouses?

It starts to affect gameplay when my sensitivity is 25

[Plague Bringer]

This is relevant to my interest. It seems that at higher sensitivities my mouse seems to move, yes, fast, but not smoothly. I can't really add much more to the OP. I honestly though it was just me being crap for a while.

It's okay. You're not alone. We can get through this. Just stay strong.

[Meisseli]

Maybe Options->Controls->Look->Smooth Mouse helps. I would never recommend that setting be turned ON though - it smoothens the movement of the mouse but makes you less accurate.

Or perhaps you have mouse acceleration on, try disabling it both inside Tremulous (with /cl_mouseaccel 0) and from your operating system's mouse settings.

[GeneralScott]

I had smooth mouse on but I didn't really notice any diff with it off, mouse acceleration was off according to console.

[GeneralScott]

meiss, just curious, what sensitivity do you have and what mouse do you use?

[Meisseli]

I presume you use Windows, try if disabling the mouse acceleration that's inside your OS - Enhance Pointer Precision or similar under mouse options - helps you.

I use the cheapest optical mouse available.

[David]

Input runs every frame, so if your FPS is (very) low then it'll skip around a bit.

Try having a play with the in_* cvars.

What OS are you on?  There are some SDL settings around that can change how the mouse works.

[Ingar]

I use the cheapest optical mouse available.

12 EUR for the M-100

[StevenM]

Another option would be to play around with these cvars:

Cl_yawspeed - controls your horizontal "snap" speed or rate at which you move up or down.
Cl_pitchspeed - controls your vertical "snap" speed or rate at which you move left or right.
M_yaw - controls your horizontal "sensitivity"
M_pitch - controls your vertical "sensitivity"

If I were you, I would decrease your sensitivity, while increasing some, or all of these cvars, until you find a good fit.

Hope this helps.

[Vape]

seta cl_pitchspeed "0"
seta cl_yawspeed "0"

They have to do with +right and +left keyboard look movements.

seta m_side "0.03"
seta m_forward "0.03"

They have to do with strafing/going forward with the mouse instead of looking with it (freelook off). Freelook will be on by default and you'd have to be crazy to play otherwise.

seta m_filter "0"

This _should_ be 0, but some people like the feel of 1 and can play great with it. What m_filter 1 does is turn on mouse interpolation, as in it adds extra 'frames' in between your mouse movements to smooth it out. The reason 0 is recommended is because these frames did not actually originate from your mouse, and on principal output that does not directly reflect the input is a worry. Still it is quite ok to use 1.

seta m_yaw "0.03"

This sets the sensitivity of horizontal (x-axis, left and right) mouse movement.

seta m_pitch "0.03"

This sets the sensitivity of vertical (y-axis, up and down) mouse movement.

There are three combinations to using yaw/pitch, and I will give three sample motivations behind them:

*The first combination would be to keep them the same, motivation being that the y-axis is just as sensitive as the x-axis and this is a pure, clean and simple way to have your mouse input setup. No funny business. Probably most people play this way and there's nothing wrong with it.

*The second would be to increase your m_yaw, or decrease m_pitch. Usually the motivation for this is so that when you make a 180 your pitch level will be preserved better because the sensitivity to move it is lower. It seems to help on some hitscans as you often need to make very little pitch movement, or if you are aiming through a small aperture and any pitch movement will result in a miss.

*The third would be to decrease your m_yaw, or increase your m_pitch. The motivation behind this last one taken from an observation that it is difficult to move the mouse up and down by a great distance in comparison to left and right. Therefore one should increase their pitch sensitivity to compensate. It can enable very low sensitivities to feel not so low, and can help with rocket jumping/bunny hopping.

Note: you can set a negative m_pitch value to reverse the axis of pitch movement, also called 'invert mouse'. You can also do this for the yaw, but you'd first have to be completely insane.

seta cl_mouseAccel "0"

This sets the degree of how much mouse acceleration you wish to use (common values like 0.1, 0.05, 0.4) . A positive value will result in positive acceleration, a negative value in negative acceleration. Zero is no acceleration. Here are some motivations/explanations of each:

*The first is mouseaccel 0. Using no mouse accel is fine. In fact I would recommend most players to just use 0 until they are experienced enough to play well even with messed up mouse settings, which they will have to endure to get a non-zero value they like should they choose to go that route.

The motivation is that the mouse input remains pure. Where you move the mouse is where it will go, at the speed you move it at, period. Some argue that a lot of fps game playing is muscle memory, and by using acceleration you disrupt your mind's natural process to do this since the sensitivity is not always the same. It's not that simple, but you have to admit they've got a point. Certainly there is nothing wrong with using 0.

*What positive acceleration (positive mouse accel value) does is make it so that the faster you move the mouse, the more sensitive it gets. Conversely, it also makes it so that the slower you move your mouse the lower your sensitivity gets. Motivation being that it is handy for games that have some weapons requiring fast turns and quick placements (mouse move fast = high sens), and other weapons that best make use of slower turns and high precision (mouse move slow = low sens). Quake live's rocket launcher, and rail fit these categories respectively.

The weapons aren't always best suited to a single sensitivity depending on the situation. If you've ever seen an aimbot, you will notice that it is able to make slow, smooth turns when required, and maximum speed fast turns as well. This is quite difficult to strive for with a single, unchanging sensitivity. Unfortunately a mouseaccel 0 sens will always be unideal for certain types of turns in-game, even if you can still make the shots.

*Negative acceleration (mouseaccel set to a negative value), makes it so that moving the mouse fast results in a lower sensitivity, and moving the mouse slow a higher sensitivity.

The motivation for this is that moving the mouse quickly can result in a loss of control, and having the sensitivity lower in this situation allows one to maintain precision.

Another motivation is that for hitscans like the las gun, when the enemy is in mid range you need to move the mouse both quickly _and_ smoothly (usually slow) to keep your crosshair on the opponent, and negative accel allows you to do this since you'll be moving the mouse slow but still be able to "keep up" with the enemy.

[Asvarox]

I use the cheapest optical mouse available.

12 EUR for the M-100

What. Mine mouse cost 30 PLN at max, which is much less than 10 EUR. You rich bastards.

As for the issue is have this too but not it's not that bad (it's only hard to aim for default eggs at nexus6) and I learned to live with it. I was always thinking it's just because of low dpi of my mouse. I play with 17.5

[SirDude]

If you get a High DPi mouse (mine is 6030 Dpi max it out then adjust the mouse sensitivity and polling rate to get the desired mouse speed but keep the high Dpi.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

Maybe Options->Controls->Look->Smooth Mouse helps. I would never recommend that setting be turned ON though - it smoothens the movement of the mouse but makes you less accurate.

Or perhaps you have mouse acceleration on, try disabling it both inside Tremulous (with /cl_mouseaccel 0) and from your operating system's mouse settings.

Apparently, macintoshes have built-in mouse acceleration which actually replaces the sensitivity of the mouse in the system prefs. (no mouse sensitivity change at all) Worst of all, my gpp's sensitivity has to be 110+ and 1.1 is 50+ sensitivity, that really bugs me when i'm going for long range (e.g. lasgun, mass driver, sniping as goon...) but this doesn't bother me at the moment because NO ONE FIXED MY MAC TREM PROBLEM.

*Negative acceleration (mouseaccel set to a negative value), makes it so that moving the mouse fast results in a lower sensitivity, and moving the mouse slow a higher sensitivity.

•And, if you turn fast enough, you'll turn the other way. I've done this before. My current default cl_mouseaccel is 2.5.

[GeneralScott]

Turning off the "enchance pointer precision" thing didn't work, but I truthfully don't really care anymore, the only gun accurate enough to make a difference are the MD and Lasgun, the lasgun I can just spam and the MD has zoom.

[KillerWhale]

If you get to the point where your mouse is jumpy, you're playing with too high a sensitivity. Turn it down to the highest point where you are consistently accurate, then work on your positioning so that you don't have to turn super-quickly.

As well, in_mouse -1 may be a good one to try out.

[GeneralScott]

Well the point is it feels like the sensitivity isn't high enough. It's like, 20. 25 is so jumpy it's not playable.

[David]

This is the problem mouse acceleration was designed to fix.

Try playing with cl_mouseAccel and a lower sensitivity.

[Cadynum]

What you need is a new mouse with a decent dpi number.
Smooth mouse -> introduces lag
Mouse acceleration -> makes your aim crap

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

What operating systems need is a 'cvar' in terminal for sensitivity. I don't like having a 'maximum' to the sensitivity.

With dretch, in gpp, i play with 220. That's insanely square.

With humans in 1.1, on my windows computer, it is 13.8.

There is a big difference.
______________________

Is there a cvar for ignoring/accepting operating system's mouse configuration?

The reason for this is because on 1.1, it uses the OS's config, and the mouse ACCELERATION is squarish. But aiming isn't.
On gpp, it is the other way around- Mouse acceleration is fine, it ignores the mac's built-in acceleration (by which the mac actually calls it 'sensitivity' ) but i also have to turn up the /sensitivity by about x5.