What's the deal with mouse acceleration?

[Marvzl1357]

Hullo,

From Linus' most recent video on the steelseries sensei, he said that there are "acceleration issues" with some laser mice. 

What exactly are "acceleration issues"? I've read that it's when the pointer speed increases dependent on the mouse acceleration. I.e. the cursor moves differently when moving your mouse at different speeds. i.e. moving 5cm on your mouse pad translates to different "screen movements" depending on your physical mouse speed. (I don't know how exactly to phrase it, but hopefully you get the point). In some cases mouse acceleration is desirable but other cases it's not, and if it is hardware induced and permanent, then that would be a case of not.

Does anyone have mouse acceleration issues? personally I never have, so I don't know what the fuss is about, in fact I have issues with turning mouse acceleration off when using a touchpad.

Can someone who has had issues please explain?

Thanks.

[Kyl3]

I read the title in a Jerry seinfeld voice. Cannot be un-thought.

 

As for acceleration, I actually have had no idea what it is was. I get told to turn it off for CS but, I have never noticed anything that might be hindering my playing.

[ZetZet]

Acceleration screws with your muscle memory. For example when you play CS you know exactly how much you need to move your mouse for a 90 degree turn, with acceleration the same distance will be different depending on how fast you move your mouse.

[CCap]

I too wonder this. I went from a POS hp mouse that I used forever (really low DPI, optical) to a 6400DPI Laser sensor mouse and noticed no accelerations. From there I switched to an 8200 DPI laser sensor mouse and still, had no acceleration issues. 

Going from Optical to Laser (to me) didn't yield any differences. 

 

If somebody could tell me why people say it does, that'd be fantastic. I've been wondering this for a while. 

[Marvzl1357]

Acceleration screws with your muscle memory. For example when you play CS you know exactly how much you need to move your mouse for a 90 degree turn, with acceleration the same distance will be different depending on how fast you move your mouse.

Maybe I'm not hardcore enough, but I have muscle memory associated with acceleration, i.e.I remember how much a mouse moves depending on how quickly I move it. It's never been a problem for me, because that's how I know how to use a mouse.

But maybe that's because I've never experienced mouse acceleration issues, but rather just mouse acceleration. 

Edit: Tried to use a mouse with mouse acceleration OFF, absolutely hated it, going back to having it on

[nsyedhasan]

I too wonder this. I went from a POS hp mouse that I used forever (really low DPI, optical) to a 6400DPI Laser sensor mouse and noticed no accelerations. From there I switched to an 8200 DPI laser sensor mouse and still, had no acceleration issues.

Going from Optical to Laser (to me) didn't yield any differences.

If somebody could tell me why people say it does, that'd be fantastic. I've been wondering this for a while.

Mouse acceleration depends on what mouse. Not every mouse has acceleration issues. Also acceleration is basically when you move your mouse and keeps going and then stops. This is usually makes you inaccurate when playing games and even when doing simple tasks in Windows.

[Osmium]

I too wonder this. I went from a POS hp mouse that I used forever (really low DPI, optical) to a 6400DPI Laser sensor mouse and noticed no accelerations. From there I switched to an 8200 DPI laser sensor mouse and still, had no acceleration issues. 

Going from Optical to Laser (to me) didn't yield any differences. 

 

If somebody could tell me why people say it does, that'd be fantastic. I've been wondering this for a while. 

 

Well I think what could have happened is that either the HP mouse had acceleration which to me seems extremely likely(not all optical are perfect) or also you might not have been as "tuned in" to how you play when you had the HP mouse and you never noticed the difference in movement(especially since you switched sensitivity as well). So since you switched multiple aspects of your mouse movements you did not notice it. For instance maybe the new mouse tracks better, has better ergonomics, and a higher dpi but it also has acceleration. In the end you play better because of all the former reasons but there is still acceleration with the new one. 

[CCap]

-snip-

 

-snipe-

Thanks guys. 

 

I'm pretty sure my R.A.T. 9 has some acceleration issues because I would constantly miss closing my browser/minimizing it all the time. Switching from that to the Roccat Kone XTD did show a pretty big improvement as far as snappiness is concerned. 

[ShadowCaptain]

my G500 suffers from acceleration and it does effect my aim somewhat, looking to change it for a G502 ASAP

 

A good way to test is put your mouse in a specific place on your screen, and mark its location on your mousemat, then move the mouse say 6" then move it back to the spot, your mouse point/reticule should end up exactly where it started

 

then try it at a faster speed, the faster I move the 6" on my g500, the further it ends up away from its original position

[Toby]

Acceleration on a touchpad makes sense, assuming you're talking about the tiny ones on laptops. You don't have much room to operate with, so quick movements resulting in big movements and small movements resulting in slower movement is ideal.

 

When it comes to mice and gaming though, you already have enough room to work with, without needing to speed up the cursor to achieve a full range of movement (assuming you don't have your DPI too low).

 

If you don't play games, then acceleration doesn't matter. If you do play games though, then you'll miss shots or misclick something in haste in varying amounts, but how often is it down to you and how often is it down to acceleration? In the quarter of a second it took you to swing your crosshairs around and fire off a shot you probably wouldn't notice the accleration in the amounts that we're talking about, but did it kick in? Did it move your cursor further by a few pixels and by how many?

 

if the possibility of that happening doesn't bother you, then get whatever you like, but personally I'd rather know know that any mistakes are down to my ability (or lack thereof) and not because my mouse moved a few extra pixels than the movement of my arm should've dictated.