Soldato
- Joined
- 15 Sep 2006
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Well I can't explain why that is. I'm guessing some firmware/driver limitations. But for all intents and purposes you can simply look at dpi as hardware sensitivity.
Mouse sensitivity for FPS?
- Thread starter chid76
- Start date
CPI (DPI) is not the same as sensitivity, it's easy to confuse them as the same because CPI does affect sensitivity. It's hard to explain but I'll try...
It's basically exactly what it's called, counts per inch, it's similar in a way, to frames per second in games.
If your mouse had 10 CPI and you swiped it across the desk it would skip because it can't keep up with the movement and there is a lack of coherence. In a similar way, if you have 10 FPS in a game, it's very choppy.
50 CPI is only going to get 50 counts worth of information for every 2.54 cm distance, which is coherent enough for desktop use, but in-game it will feel a bit choppy.
At perhaps 200 or 400 CPI the mouse is coherent enough for all game motions (pretty much). Now the question is, if 400 cpi is good, why is 800, 1800, or even 5000 not better?
The fact is that with higher CPI values, some problems start to arise. One is that the mouse is seeing the mouse pad (or surface) so well that it picks up every minor detail and can register movements that it shouldn't have, resulting in positive acceleration. Also, if the mouse picks up more information than it can handle or sees the fast motions as a blur and does not pick up certain movements, you can have skipping or negative acceleration.
Personally I don't see a need for more than 800 CPI (ever), I use 400.
A higher CPI value is more sensitive though, for obvious reasons.