IRS's Guide to Mice as it Applies to Twitch Games...
The goal of this guide is to help people maximize thier performance and not be able to legitemately excuse lack of performance on thier crosshair imput system.
Picking a mouse.
I reccommend one of the Logitech MX series as they have the highest hertz. Basically hertz refers to the number of times your mouse scans the surface per second. The microsoft intelli mouse is good too, it's just older technology - so it is somewhat less accurate and powerful. The gap is not so wide however that it overides personal preference.
Onto mouse pads. Mouse pads are important because they reduce the friction between your mouse and the scanning surface. That friction can negate the accuracy of your specialized mouse. You see, friction does more than increase the required force to move your mouse, it makes your mouse jump. The jump from the initial movement is more than potential choppiness in continuous movement. All of this made simple: your crosshair will jump pixels and it will be hard to aim precisely where you wish.
A mouse and mousepad cover the hardware, now lets move on to the software concerns. I would reccommend installing the drivers that come with your mouse or getting the most up to date drivers off the internet.
Is it possible to tweak your mouse?
Why yes it is. You can get more hertz out of your mouse by switching from usb to ps2. You see, while usb is capable of handleing more data by default, ps2 is capable of more by tweaking. Every mouse I know of on the market has a usb to ps2 adapter included so just attach that - install the software, and then set the ps2 rate to 200. This is quite an improvement over the less than 100 hertz on usb. I highly reccommend making this tweak, when I did it I was able to turn off mouse smoothing. Why would you want to turn off mouse smoothing? It averages the last two inputs of your mouse together to create a crosshair location between them, which is to say, it places your crosshair not where it should be according to your mouse movement.
What about sensitivity?
Good question, I was hoping I'd ask that. I'm going to be brutal here, if someone tells you to turn up your mouse sensitivity high, they are 99/100 times a noob. I dont know of any invite level player or CPL goer that uses high sensitivity. This is a little secret that is starting to become more well known: turn your mouse sensitivity down low for supreme ownage. Even in fast paced games with lots of quick mouse action such as ut2k3 and Quake 3, too much sensitivity will burn you.
For tactical or realism games such as Counter-Strike you would do well to turn your sensitivity down to what is currently considered extreme low levels. My sensitivity in CS is 1.6, I brought this down from 8+ back in the day (default windows sensitivity), and let me tell you, I make shots that I couldn't before. Why is it exactly that low sensitivity aids your marksmanship? It's really quite simple. For the same reason that old people have phones with big buttons. It's easier to hit a target that is bigger, and in hand-eye coordination terms low sensitivity makes targets bigger. Think of this, if i have a sensitivity of 2 or under, and you have sensitivity of 6, then the area that my mouse has to move into to score a headshot is 3 times as big as yours.
On that note, good luck with the fragging.
