no mouse acceleration?

(_Shorty) #1

No mouse acceleration support? Some of us prefer it.

(ayatollah) #2

Surely the Sensitivity option covers this?!

(_Shorty) #3

uh, no, mouse sensitivity is something completely seperate from mouse acceleration.

(murka) #4

you can use accel from mouse software…

(_Shorty) #5

nope, there is no acceleration in-game, and I always use it in windows

(moonShield) #6

Not sure but I think the cvar is cl_mouseAccel

(_Shorty) #7

I tried this from my quake4 config, but it didn’t work.

seta m_accel “0.1”

I’ll give the other a try, too.

(ayatollah) #8

Going by the official cvar list from the beta (http://4newbies.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/ETQW/htmlcvars.php) there is no mouse acceleration cvar.

Can I ask what the difference between mouse acceleration and sensitivity?

If you set mouse acceleration to 4, for example, the cursor moves 4 times faster than than you move the mouse. Is this not the same as sensitivity?!

(kamikazee) #9

No, because linear speed and acceleration are two different things.

The linear speed is controlled by the sensitivity, it multiplies the amount you move your mouse to get the distance moved on screen.

Acceleration, on the other hand, not only moves the in-game aim point linearly but also moves it faster and faster as long as you move your mouse (as if you would move your mouse normally at a steady pace and continuously increase the sensitivity). This makes it possible to spin around when moving the mouse far less while using the same start sensitivity. It does mean however that you are far more likely to “overshoot” your target meaning your are not as accurate when not using any acceleration.

(_Shorty) #10

You clearly have no idea what mouse acceleration is, so I really have no idea why you even bothered responding.

Mouse sensitivity describes how much you would like the cursor/aim to respond according to how far you move the mouse. Let’s take the game as our example. Say you have the mouse sensitivity set for 1, and you move your mouse 4" to the right. Let’s say this moves your view in the game only 90 degrees. So rather than looking north, you’re now looking east. Say you set your mouse sensitivity to 2, and you move your mouse 4" to the right. The sensitivity is now double, so your view moves double, to 180 degrees, and you’re now facing south.

Let’s go back to a sensitivity of 1, and a 90 degree turn with 4" of movement of the mouse. Without mouse acceleration, it doesn’t matter if you move that 4" distance really, really, painfully, excruciatingly slowly. Let’s say it takes you an hour to move that 4". You’re going to be facing 90 degrees from your starting point. Let’s say you try this again, only this time you move the mouse that 4" in 1/10th of a second, a quick flick of the wrist. You’re still going to be facing 90 degrees from your start point, because you still just moved the mouse that same 4" across the table. How fast or slow you move the mouse is irrelevant. Some people think they play better with mouse movement such as this, without acceleration. They get used to how far they have to move their mouse to generate a certain amount of turning in the game, and the more they get used to it the faster they get at accurate movements. This is all well and good for those people.

Mouse acceleration is completely seperate from sensitivity, so in this example I’ll still be using the same sensitivity setting of 1. Only this time, we’ve got mouse acceleration turned on. Say you move your mouse 4" to the right, and this movement takes you 2 seconds to accomplish. You’re now facing 90 degrees, just as the previous example. Now, let’s try it all over again, only this time we’ll move the mouse that 4" distance in 1/10th of a second again, a quick flick of the wrist. This time, we’re not facing 90 degrees from our starting point. This time we are facing 180 degrees from our starting point. And the reason we have turned more in this example is because of mouse acceleration. We moved the mouse much faster than the first attempt, and by doing so we are telling the computer that we want our quicker movement of the mouse to mean quicker/more movement in the game. The opposite is also true, if we move it slower, we want it to mean less/slower movement in the game. So if we took 10 seconds to move that 4" distance across the table, the mouse input in the game would only mean a 45 degree turn.

These aren’t hard and fast numbers, and are entirely made up just to illustrate what mouse acceleration does. Quicker movement means more movement, slower movement means less movement. Some people absolutely hate this. But, at the same time, some people absolutely love this. It can take longer to figure out how your mouse movement is going to affect your input to the game, since how fast you move also affects how much you move. But, not everybody wants to do so. If you do take the time to figure out the extra dimension that this adds to your input movements, you can be very accurate, and you can be even better than you were without it. But it is something extra to learn and figure out, and for some people can be too tricky to bother with.

Why would you want to use mouse acceleration, if it’s a bit trickier to master, and your movements don’t always mean the same amount of movement in the game? Well, when you move the mouse slowly it gives you finer control. Slower movements mean less movement in the game. Excellent if you’re trying to zero in the last couple of feet on some guys head while you’re sniping from a distance. Quicker movements mean more movement in the game. Excellent if you’re trying to do a quick 180 because some guy popped out behind you and you want to start shooting back as quickly as possible. A quick flick moving the mouse 2" to accomplish that 180 turn is going to be faster than a 6" movement, and once you get used to the acceleration you become very accurate at how far and how quickly you need to move it to make a turn of such-and-such amount. Takes longer to master, but you will be quicker once you do so, without any loss in accuracy. And you gain accuracy for the smaller aim adjustments, by moving the mouse slower.

Without mouse acceleration, if I have mouse sensitivity set high enough that I turn 180 degrees in the amount of movement that I’m used to using to execute a 180 degree turn, then smaller more accurate movements such as moving maybe 1-25 degrees to hit someone become much too sketchy as they require so little input, and any movement at all becomes quite magnified. Without mouse acceleration, if I have mouse sensitivity set low enough that those 1-25 degree aiming movements are comfortable, then this also pushes those 180 degree turns into much more mouse movement than I want to use for those turns. Mouse acceleration balances it out by allowing me to adjust how much I turn compared to how far I move the mouse by adjusting how quickly I move it. I’m insanely used to it, and there are a great many games that I’ve never played for more than half an hour simply because they didn’t have mouse acceleration support. It’s that annoying for me to play without it. Can I find a setting in-between when there is no mouse acceleration support, so that I can still play the game sort of comfortably? Sure. But it’s annoying enough that I would rather not bother playing it at all. Gets on my nerves. And then I usually just fire up some other game instead. I’m insanely grateful that Valve has used what appears to be the same mouse movement code ever since Half-Life was released in 1998. The very latest Source Engine games feel exactly the same to me as Half-Life did back then. Every Source game is a delight, because I just use the same settings I have since then. That’s awesome. No learning curve whatsoever. I don’t have to figure out what sensitivity setting to use, because it’s the same one I’ve always used. And they obey whatever acceleration setting you use in windows, also great. If you don’t use it in windows, it doesn’t get used in the game. If you do use it in windows, it gets used in the game. After playing Counter-Strike for so many years, Counter-Strike Source gets released. Cool. Start playing that, and waddyaknow, mouse feels exactly the same. Cool. Don’t have to get used to slightly different (or vastly different) mouse movement in the new game, and instead can simply get right down to enjoying playing it.

So, no, the sensitivity setting cover it. :wink: It’s only part of the equation.

(_Shorty) #11

This is incorrect, it does not move it faster and faster the longer you continue to move the mouse. As I just long-windedly explained, it moves faster or slower depending on how quickly you move the mouse. And as part of that long-ass explanation, I also said that this does not mean you will be less accurate with it turned on. It just means that you’ll have to learn how the acceleration itself behaves. Once you do that, you’ll be more accurate. If you suck with acceleration on, but are great with it off, it’s only because you haven’t tried it long enough to figure it out. It can be figured out. Just a matter of living with it long enough to do just that.

(Sauron|EFG) #12

In Q3 engine games it simply adds speed * cl_mouseaccel to your normal sensitivity before calculating the new view angles. The faster you move the mouse, the higher sensitivity you get.

(speed = distance the mouse was moved/time)