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Best Mouse for Precision Gaming?
ubergamer asks: "Logitech's Dual Optical boasts two 800dpi sensors taking 2000 shots a second, Microsoft's Explorer 3.0 only has a single sensor at 400dpi but takes 6000 shots a second. Then there's ofcourse the Razer Boomslang 2000 with a single 2000dpi sensor but is partially mechanical (dust argh!) So which is best for playing my favorite FPS?"
I personally love my dual optical mouse. It's very smooth and quite forgiving of not being completely parallel with the screen. Plus it has a nice "heavy" feel (which can be customized by pulling out the weight inside). The only thing I don't like about it is the rubber on the sides, but other than that, the dual optical is the mouse to beat for me.
Seriously. Spin, you're there. The Logitech has 5 buttons (joy! -- extra functions).
Never run out of mouse area with a trackball.
From the reviews I've read, and people I've talked to, the extra laser doesn't really add too much to its percision. This product suffers from the 'more is better' stigmata, just like the Voodoo4 & Voodoo5. I personally have no desire to spend an extra $20 for some 'feature' whos use is rather dubious & redundant anyway. I'll just buy a single laser mouse for less that does the same exact thing. Regarding the boomslang, its a piece of crap, honest, facts. My friend had 2, both died within 5 months of having it, and I have heard numerous other complaints from other people regarding it. Sorry, but if I spent $80 (boomslang is not cheap) on a mouse, it better damn well work for bare minimum 2 years perfectly. People these days are very quick to judge a product purely by its speed, performance, etc etc, but no one really judges the lifetime of these products. I know I'd rather have a slighly slower HD that has a 99.9% chance of living for 5 years, than some top of the line IBM drive thats more than likely to croak within the first 7 months.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Before switching to a more expensive mouse, you should check out ps2rate, you can boost the sampling rate of your mouse up to 200hz. It moves noticably smoother. This is not necessary if you're on Windows 2000 or XP though, but I use it on 98.
My logitech is an OK mouse, except for the drivers. In order to use the thumb button you need the logitech drivers (otherwise it works fine with the MS drivers). However, these drivers interfere with wheel usage in games and you cannot use the thumb button unless you bind it to e.g. the shift or ctrl button which makes it useless outside games.
The solution for the wheel problem is to kill the mouse software before starting the game or run a registry hack (available on the logitech site, well hidden though) which causes some applications to receive wheel events twice.
In addition to all this I sometimes have issues with my keyboard after coming out of hibernation mode.
I would go for the MS mouse if I had to spend my money again. The MS drivers are more stable. In terms of precision you shouldn't expect miracles from the logitech BTW.
Jilles
but it itsn't the only thing you have to remember.
Generally what you want is the fastest sampling speed. What is interesting is that in Windows XP (I'm assuming you are using windows for gaming) the USB ports are limited to a 125 hz rate, so in Windows XP, it is usually better to hook your mouse up through the ps2 port and up the sampling to something like 200 hz.
I believe that in 95/98/ME, you can't up the ps2 sampling rate that high (well, there are tools to do that, but even though they say they are sampling that high they really aren't.) I've heard different things about win2k and its ps2 port, so I'm not sure.
One more thing, you won't notice a difference if you are chunking along at 30 fps. This will only matter if you have a machine capable of running your game smoothly. (For example, running Quake 3 at 150 fps or something like that, you easily notice the difference when running your mouse at 200 hz. Your aiming will be much smoother. But if you run Quake 3 at 40-50 fps, you won't notice the difference because the extra mouse inputs are thrown out.)
I have the intellimouse optical... it's the smaller, less expensive microsoft optical mouse and, in my opinion, far and away the best they offer. You can get the huge grey intellimouse explorer, but I never liked the button layout, it was just TOO big (what's this fad with huge mice that you have to palm to even use?) and... well.. it died after a particularly minor amount of frustration-fed abuse.
I keep my windows pc around because I'm a rabid CS maniac and simply must have dedicated gaming hardware, and have considered changing both to that dual-optical logi AND the razer boomslang, if it will work better than my ms mouse. The only problems I have with optical (and experienced this will all ms opticals I've owned) are that sometimes I have to wiggle the mouse a bit before it "wakes up" and starts tracking properly (they light gets brighter when this happens), and I have serious problems making fast turns in my game. Basically if I jerk the mouse too fast in trying to do a 90 degree left turn to shoot some villain coming from that direction, all that really ends up happening is my character twitches and moves about 10 degrees to the right. Needless to say, I then die. Very frustrating. I've also had situations where my character suddenly is looking straight up. That's very disorienting. A friend had one that would suddenly look left. Odd.
Anyway, if there's a mouse that eliminates those problems, is optical (can't go back, I don't think, purely for the don't-have-to-clean-it benefits), and has 5 buttons that work as well as the ms intellimouse optical's, then I'll switch.
The Thumb button just looks like a middle button press.
If I could figure out a way to get the thumb button to register as button-6 instead of just a second button-2 I would have no complaints.
Some people might think needing so many buttons is overkill, but for Urban Terror I need all of the help I can get.
I bought a Logitech Dual Optical mouse when my Microsoft Intellimouse started getting twitchy for some reason. I absolutely love it, however I've found that the mousing surface has a lot to do with how smoothly the mouse operates. I use a nice padded cloth Belkin mousepad with a wrist rest, and I find that the smoothness is ideal for gaming. I've never had trouble with the mouse getting "lost" during fast movements like some people have, and I suspect this is due to the mousing surface. As long as the mouse knows where it is, you'll be fine.
If you really need high sensitivity, the optical mice will not measure up to the boomslang The thing is incredible -- you just rest the base of your hand on the mousepad, and move the mouse with your fingers.
;)
Dust is not so much a problem, but the parts in the boomslang are pretty sensitive to stuff like hairs (it gets is high sensitivity by having a big ball but small rollers). I have had to clean it several times. Optical mice have their own share of glitches, too, though you can't clean them to fix it.
Also, the boomslang has a lower form factor and bigger buttons (and a nicer scroll wheel) than the optical mice I've used.
Those who never use trackballs long enough to get the feel of them will forever be missing out. Seriously, there's a reason the trackball was invented before the mouse, and why the trackball is standard-issue on many high-end workstations and graphics rigs: it's just more intuitive and easy to work with. The only advantage to a mouse, and the reason I think they became standard over trackballs, is that trackballs are easier to gunk up since your hand (with all its oils, dirt, food residue, etc.) moves overtop the ball, rather than theball moving on a pad which sadly enough is usually cleaner than human hands.
;-)
Seriously, with a mouse you have to make sure it's on a surface with enough space to give you free movement from corner of screen to corner of screen--whereas a trackball is stationary, and you only have to move your fingers an inch or two from side to side. just make sure to adjust the sensitivity to your liking; this aspect is more important than with a standard mouse...
These are reasons why I love my Intellimouse Explorer Trackball and consider it the best gaming mouse *ever*. And, the palm of my hand cups its pseudo-breast-shape perfectly, leaving my thumb to rest on the first button (with the second button and scrolling wheel/third-button-combo thumb-accessible just above), with my forefinger and middle finger resting on the ball, and the fourth and fifth mouse buttons by my little fingers. It's an ideal gaming interface. If your hands are too small to comfortably rest on the Explorer Trackball, try the Logitech Trackman Marble FX which I almost bought instead.
Like I said, the one drawback of the trackball is that it gets gunked up easy, so give it a quick clean before any important gaming sessions--easy since the trackball pops right out, giving easy access to the "ball holder" which should be quickly wiped across the optical sensor area and at the little metal nubs which space the ball out from the cavity. 30 seconds tops, and it's pristine. Being optical, it seems to track at least as well as the regular Intellimouse Explorer--probably better, since there's a uniform tracking pattern on the ball which probably surpasses most optical tracking surfaces.
Let's just say I'm the quickest-aim with a sniper rifle there is, thanks to my optical trackball.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus