Slashdot Mirror
Razer Develops 1000 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse
gameaxx writes "Back in 2002, Slashdot ran a piece on what the best mouse for precision PC gaming was, and there was a debate over whether the optomechanical Razer Boomslang running at 2000 dpi was the uber gaming mouse, or the optical mice from Logitech or Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 running at 800 dpi were the best precision gaming mice to have. Now, Razer has just announced (PDF link) the upcoming February 2004 release of a ultra-precise 1000 dpi gaming mouse called the Razer Viper. At 1000 dpi, this breaks all the boundaries set by bigwigs like Logitech and Microsoft, whose mice max out at 800 dpi. Whether this settles the optical 800 dpi vs Boomslang optomechanical 2000 dpi debate once and for all with the release of a 1000 dpi gaming mouse remains to be seen until we actually get our hands on it."
I've got an old, three-button Logitech serial mouse I found in a cupboard somewhere. It's definitely old technology, but it can still report movement even when I give it teeny-tiny nudges. How much accuracy is really required?
300dpi is a lot - try printing something at 300dpi on a laser printer and then move your fingernail over each individual pixel. Finding it difficult? 1000dpi is a pixel every 25.4 microns, and I'm pretty sure my muscles aren't that accurate.
Plus, there's quantisation effects to take into effect in games. The player yaw/pitch/roll angles in Half-Life, for instance, are quantised into comparatively large steps - thus making this hyper-accurate aiming thing a bit complicated.
There must be a good reason for it, though - but what is it?
Regarding using such mice for gaming, I can see how this would be of benefit in something like Unreal Tournament for sniping etc.
However does the higher DPI mean that one needs more mouse mat "real estate" to use it effectively?
Could a similar effect be achieved by simply turning down the mouse sensitivity in the game for a "regular" mouse?
Actually higher dpi can help - you set the mouse sensitivity lower, then you have finer level of control.
;).
I don't know about 2000dpi but 300dpi is pretty coarse.
If you are going to quickly put a crosshair on a particular pixel on a 1024x768 (or higher) screen (there are people who can physically do that), 300dpi doesn't seem to be as good as you make it out to be. You want some extra precision so that a little shake/sensor noise won't bump you off to the wrong pixel when you are sniping someone far away.
e.g. if you have a 300dpi mouse, then 1000 mickeys would be 3.33 inches, and with a 1:1 mapping - 1 mickey to 1 pixel. Which doesn't leave you much room if there is a 1 mickey error in sampling.
With a 2000dpi mouse, 1000 mickeys would be half an inch but you can now reduce the sensitivity to say 5:1 - 5 mickeys per pixel or even lower, so that you have extra precision per pixel at a comfortable enough mouse-travel - e.g. 2.5 inches for 1000 pixels.
The game could also have more res than screen res. Or your screen res could be 1600x1200. If you have a 300dpi mouse to maintain precision you may have to move the mouse nearly half a foot in order to move from one screen edge to another - which seems uncomfortable to me. And then when you do the 170-180 degree turns in first person games (e.g. spin around to shoot at something you know is there but is currently out of sight), you really start running out of mousepad. If you don't maintain precision e.g. 1 mickey = 4 pixels then you could end up frustrated at not being able to hit someone far away- crosshair refuses to end on the relevant pixel.
Of course if you play games at 320x240 then the extra dpi is unlikely to help as much
That said there's one more thing that can affect mice more than dpi when it comes to game play - samples per second. If the optical sensors don't take enough sensor samples per second, optical mice could get lost with very quick movements - the mouse doesn't know which direction you have moved because the first and second positions are too different. Also if your fps is 100 and your mouse only gives you 40 output samples a sec, it really sucks. output samples != sensor samples. output samples = sent to computer, sensor samples = for the mouse to figure things out.