Sensitivity

[Connection]

this post kinda got lost in the middle of a big copy-paste fest and i figured it would be better off with it's own thread:

 

 

mouse sensitivity can't be compared easily between two people because it depends on so many factors:

what mouse you have, what your windows mouse sensitivity & acceleration are set at, your screen size and refresh rate, DPI your mouse operates at, in-game sensitivity setting, how smooth and clean or rough and dirty your mousepad is, your in-game FPS and pitch / yaw, how fast your graphics card responds, etc. ... not to mention your own reaction times and how nimble you are at flicking your wrist this way and that.

 

you might use 2-3 to get the same "sensitivity" as someone else on a different machine who uses 5-6.. for example i use sensitivity between 0.74 and 0.92 --- and i play with what you would call "fast sensitivity" most of the time. why??? because i have a really sensitive mouse, set at 1000 dpi on an 800x600 screen with a good refresh rate and gfx card for stable, relatively high FPS. OK so it's all complicated why your sensitivity should be whatever..

.. best thing to do is to play around with different settings until you are comfortable with a setting. forget about what anyone else uses; your PC is different.

 

here are some tips for adjusting your sensitivity, courtesy of Connection Interrupted =D

 

* make sure your mouse and mousepad are CLEAN. pick up your mouse and turn it over -- if it is rollerball, throw it away and go buy a laser mouse. that's all there is to say about it lol. no really, for rollerball, there should be an easy way to take off the cover for the ball, remove the ball and clean it with rubbing alcohol. take a q-tip and clean the sensors with a little bit of rubbing alcohol as well. not much, just enough to make the q-tip damp. for laser mice make sure there is no hair or dust on the lens; clean the lense in the same way. clean your mousepad and if you are munching on crisps move them to the other side of the keyboard please. the keyboard is more forgiving to crumbs and dust than the mouse is. this is important -- you must have reliable, consistent surface to use your mouse on or setting up sensitivity is waste of time if you roll over crisp crumbs all afternoon = so use some soapy water and scrub your mousepad down every couple of days to a week.

 

* turn off windows mouse acceleration. just trust me. got to control panel /mouse settings / and turn off all the bling. if you have a good mouse with it's own software make your adjustments there, not in windows settings. if you don't have something like that just turn the windows mouse sensitivity all the way up, turn any other settings like mouse smoothing and acceleration off and go from there.

 

* some mice have independent adjustments for pitch and yaw. pitch is the speed your mouse moves up/down and yaw is the speed your cursor moves left/right. generally for shooting games you want low pitch ( so your cursor stays near head-height ) and fast yaw ( so you can turn quickly ). in-game theses are usually restricted to some range -- if you can set them outside of game leave them default in the game. if you can't set them outside the game you should tweak them before adjusting sensitivity. default is 0.22, so maybe m_pitch 0.16 and m_yaw 0.28--ish, but be aware of PB restrictions on these numbers. if you don't understand them do some research before you mess with it. don't mess with anything you don't understand.

 

* do whatever you can to make the game run smoothly regarding rate, screen size, refresh rate, graphics settings etc. you want stable frames-per-second ( FPS ) so you have a reliable measure for mouse movement, so cap it at a number that you can get steadily. do:

/cg_drawfps 1 to see what your fps is ( i think that is right cvar?? ) and do

/com_maxfps XXX for a number that you get steadily. 43, 76, and 125 are "magic" numbers btw. im not explaining why right now.

 

* now you can mess with the /sensitivity command. find a spot in game where you are free to move side-to-side and jump around a bit and where you have a small stationary target to keep your crosshair on, something like a fencepost, a turret, or your afk m8's head. start with a number that feels not too slow or not too fast and jump/strafe side to side trying to keep your cursor on the target you picked out. you'll have one of two problems -- either your crosshair is a little in front of the target when you move or it's a little behind. for example you run left and try to keep on target, and your cursor is a little to the left of the target. that would be "ahead." do this for 30 seconds or so so you get a consistent idea of how your aim is.. then if you are ahead = sensitivity too fast, if you are behind the target = sensitivity too slow. in the console you can set the sensitivity to many decimal places, not just whole numbers, so adjust in half steps or something ( for example, you start with sens = 3. you try it out and you are too fast. now try sens = 2.5 ). adjust the way you think you should a little bit at a time and try it out for another 30 seconds. keep repeating this until you can pretty much keep your cursor on an object the size of a players head at medium range while moving around.

 

 

you'll notice that it's harder to keep your aim right while jumping and easier while crouched.. that ought to teach you something -- doublejumping around like an idiot in a 1-1 will get you killed most of the time because you can't shoot straight while jumping, and at the LEAST will make you waste ammo.

 

well hope this helps someone who bothers to read it =D

 

thanks to Raziel for his guide to inspire this small tutorial. -- "Aiming by Raziel" is hosted on my website's download section for anyone interested in more advanced aim-tweaking.

[Connection]

one more thing -- your sensitivity may change according to what ET version you are playing -- jaymod, etpro, and diff releases of etpub have different settings, so tweak your mouse for the server you are on and be aware that it may need a little bump one way or the other when you go to another server. one of the first things you should do when you join a server is jump around a little bit and see if you need to raise or lower your sensitivity just a little bit. it shouldn't be any big difference, but may be noticeable if you are used to very fine aim.

 

HEREis a link to "Aiming by Raziel" for anyone who is interested in a more technical discussion of learning to aim.