How smooth should a good mouse be? Simple question.

Luke876 · Apr 6, 2015

I still have not found an answer to this though.

If I try to draw a horizontal line on Paint my mouse can do it in a perfectly straight line.

When I try to draw a diagonal line I get the 'stair' effect, as seen in the image below:

http://i.imgur.com/8Sv7i3T.jpg?1

Is this normal? It irritates me because I want a perfectly smooth diagonal line, like with the horizontal one. My hand does not appear to be vibrating any more when drawing the diagonal line compared to the horizontal.

When playing FPS games this particularly bothers me because as a result the camera does not turn entirely smoothly when I look around, like it does with an analogue stick on my 360 controller.

I've tried 2 mice and one has an adjustable DPI but it hasn't seemed to help. Is this something that's just normal for mice and I'll have to live with it? Sensitivity is average and I have tried adjusting them also to no avail.

Thanks.

Eximo · Apr 6, 2015

Well first off, paint isn't exactly a good test for, well anything really. It is a very simple graphics editing tool.

The stair effect is simply a factor of how images are displayed on computers. particularly when drawing. Anti-Aliasing alleviates this visually somewhat (which recent versions of MS Paint can do) but does nothing about the coordinate system used to determine the mouse position in relation to the screen resolution. To see the effect you want there you would need to invest in some professional graphics editing software or use an alternative like GIMP or Inkscape.

As for gameplay, the better the sensor in the mouse the more finely it can track subtle movements. Translating that to mouse or cross-hair position on the screen is a little more complicated. It will still be affixing the mouse position to a coordinate location on the screen resolution. Since pixels don't overlap (though they do in reality) in the coordinate system the mouse can only really be at a single given point. With a high DPI low sensitivity mouse you will notice very fine control. If you take a low DPI mouse and run it at high sensitivity you are making the sensor less accurate. You are asking for more movement with less effort, when it can detect those small movements it works well. If it can't, then it will jump from place to place more then you would want.

Most 'gaming' mice these days start around 10,000 DPI, if you aren't near that there is room for improvement. 3600 DPI is sort of common. 600 DPI is probably the minimum for some level of accuracy, but sensitivities must be left relatively low.

Mouse smoothing, acceleration, and other settings can also effect your mousing experience. You will need to experiment to see how that works.

Luke876 · Apr 7, 2015

Eximo :

Well first off, paint isn't exactly a good test for, well anything really. It is a very simple graphics editing tool.

The stair effect is simply a factor of how images are displayed on computers. particularly when drawing. Anti-Aliasing alleviates this visually somewhat (which recent versions of MS Paint can do) but does nothing about the coordinate system used to determine the mouse position in relation to the screen resolution. To see the effect you want there you would need to invest in some professional graphics editing software or use an alternative like GIMP or Inkscape.

As for gameplay, the better the sensor in the mouse the more finely it can track subtle movements. Translating that to mouse or cross-hair position on the screen is a little more complicated. It will still be affixing the mouse position to a coordinate location on the screen resolution. Since pixels don't overlap (though they do in reality) in the coordinate system the mouse can only really be at a single given point. With a high DPI low sensitivity mouse you will notice very fine control. If you take a low DPI mouse and run it at high sensitivity you are making the sensor less accurate. You are asking for more movement with less effort, when it can detect those small movements it works well. If it can't, then it will jump from place to place more then you would want.

Most 'gaming' mice these days start around 10,000 DPI, if you aren't near that there is room for improvement. 3600 DPI is sort of common. 600 DPI is probably the minimum for some level of accuracy, but sensitivities must be left relatively low.

Mouse smoothing, acceleration, and other settings can also effect your mousing experience. You will need to experiment to see how that works.

I feel fairly stupid now for not realising that the bumps do align with the pixels on my monitor.

However I would expect this to not affect the movement of the camera in games, as there is no mouse icon. Yet I am still not experiencing a smooth turning of the camera like I do with an analogue stick on a controller. And therein lies the issue that I can't quite figure out if it is normal or not...

Eximo · Apr 7, 2015

Analog sticks are eventually translated into digital values. Basically an algorithm will be used to take a raw input voltage and associate that with a fixed position. Not really sure what the bit rating on that would be, 16 bit would allow 65536 discrete positions, or +-32768, and that is probably more then enough.

And another algorithm will relate that position to an acceleration value. (How far from center determines turn rate as an example) There is a lot of math involved in making that work. I can guarantee you there is a lot of smoothing and rounding algorithms to take the raw input and make it seem fluid.

So in the case of games the crosshair is generally fixed in the center of the screen. The "mouse" action is still being taken into account, but instead of moving the mouse cursor it is 'moving' the camera position in relation to the 3D environment. If that makes sense...

This goes a little above the math I think I can explain in text, but then we start talking about arcs/degrees on a 360 degree field of vision. So if they were to take a 16bit number again and divide 360 by 65536 to .0055 degrees that can be represented by each binary value. Then you take your DPI measurement, mouse movement speed (acceleration) and all the other factors against a few algorithms you end up with the movement amount generated by your mouse movements in relation to the camera position in likely radians/sec or something.

Luke876 · Apr 10, 2015

Eximo :

Analog sticks are eventually translated into digital values. Basically an algorithm will be used to take a raw input voltage and associate that with a fixed position. Not really sure what the bit rating on that would be, 16 bit would allow 65536 discrete positions, or +-32768, and that is probably more then enough.

And another algorithm will relate that position to an acceleration value. (How far from center determines turn rate as an example) There is a lot of math involved in making that work. I can guarantee you there is a lot of smoothing and rounding algorithms to take the raw input and make it seem fluid.

So in the case of games the crosshair is generally fixed in the center of the screen. The "mouse" action is still being taken into account, but instead of moving the mouse cursor it is 'moving' the camera position in relation to the 3D environment. If that makes sense...

This goes a little above the math I think I can explain in text, but then we start talking about arcs/degrees on a 360 degree field of vision. So if they were to take a 16bit number again and divide 360 by 65536 to .0055 degrees that can be represented by each binary value. Then you take your DPI measurement, mouse movement speed (acceleration) and all the other factors against a few algorithms you end up with the movement amount generated by your mouse movements in relation to the camera position in likely radians/sec or something.

So in other words, the camera will still move in a pixel-restricted fashion, just like a mouse icon does, which explains the movement being not as smooth as with an analogue stick?

giantbucket · Apr 10, 2015

effectively, pixel dimensions in the X and Y plane (up/down and left/right) are shorter than on the diagonal since they're pretty well square (since your screen is squared off), so a movement in X or Y is made in smaller finite increments, but a movement on the diagonal is made in larger (around 40% larger) increments, making them look more discrete than fluid.

basically, it's like graph paper. go up/down/left/right and it's a smaller step than going diagonal. even if the pixel really is ROUND, its spacing is on a square grid.

Eximo · Apr 13, 2015

So in other words, the camera will still move in a pixel-restricted fashion, just like a mouse icon does, which explains the movement being not as smooth as with an analogue stick?

Not really, both are subject to the same restrictions once they become digital signals. It more sounds like you have dealt with low or average quality mice. The ones with decent sensors start around the $60-80 price point.

The ten year old mouse I am using right now is 600 DPI. It was 69.99 when I go the first one. (The last two were new old stock and very expensive, but I really like this mouse, sad to see it having issues again actually) 600 DPI is about the minimum I can see getting anywhere near an accurate First Person Shooter experience.

For gaming I have a Steelcase Sensei, the sensor in that is too good, I think I have it running around 14,000 DPI, but it can do a lot more. Certainly the smoothest experience I have had with a mouse.

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How smooth should a good mouse be? Simple question.

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