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."

Comments

How much accuracy is really required?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?