I've been waiting to post this until the CAL season ended so everyone would be more readily able to change their settings. Anyway, as most of you know, I hail Antigen's mouse guide on the CAL forums as one of the best theorystrike pieces ever written. Well, I was reading through it again the other day and picked up on something I missed, section 2.10 - finding your perfect sensitivity. At first I was wary, I had seen a few other 'snake oil' pieces on the subject, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt; it was written by antigen, wasn't it?
After reading through the process, I found it to be fairly decent. Leaving very little to be determined by the placebo effect and subjectivity, it proved to be decently scientific.
I'm going to post here the method, giving full credit to its author, Antigen. If you decide that you like the method, download the .rar file following. It includes a demo that will make the process make 100% more sense.
Then, if you're really crazy about finding the best sensitivity. Do it 5 times over the course of 5 days. Take your results, which should be fairly close to each other, and average them to find your perfect sensitivity.
2.10 - Finding the PERFECT sensitivity.
Thanks to impuLsive (so +rep him also
) I can describe an excellent way of getting very close to your ideal sensitivity in-game. The way this method works is you start your own server in CS:S by typing "map de_dust2" into console. Then you type, sv_cheats 1 in console. Then "give weapon_ak47" without quotes. Now you have an AK-47 and an empty server to use.
Start by looking at a wall somewhere in the open and fire a 3-5 round burst into it. Now keep the bullet marks in your crosshairs and start strafing, aim fixed as best as you can on the bullet holes. The goal is to be so perfectly on target looking at your bullet marks that it's as if there is a poll hinged from them that's attached to your gun, and you just rotate and move as one around the marks.
You can strafe around your marks from different distances, including close range and farther away to get a good feel for the exercise. Also consider what spots you play on your maps and the distances you usually will encounter enemies from while playing when you decide how far back to be from your marks. It also helps to move your mouse smoothly and not drag your hand too much while doing this exercise. When you are finished practicing, write down the sens you were using on a sheet of paper and get a calculator. (or use the windows calculator if you don't mind to Alt+Tab)
Skim through the next three paragraphs then download my SensFinding demo from my ftp at the end. It will will be much more clear once you have seen me perform the steps so you get the idea.Now in console, type sensitivity and double that value. Try the same experiment again with twice the sens. Once you quickly get used to the new speed, see if you are tracking the marks better or worse than before. Write this sensitivity down on the sheet. Now you are going to compare to one half the original value, the calculator will help you find this, you only need to bother with precision to the nearest .001 when you write your sens down. Quickly adjust to it and do the strafing experiment and aim the best you can. While you are trying to decide consider the following: if a mouse sensitivity is too high you may find trouble controlling the crosshair and it may bounce around your marks and jitter, conversely if it is too slow, you may find yourself sliding off your mousepad or falling behind the bullet holes while you strafe.
Now look at the sheet of paper. Cross out the worst highest or lowest sens remaining, leaving your best two sensitivities on the sheet. If you kept the higher sens, double it again and test at that new higher sens. If you kept the lower sens, divide it by two and test at that new lowest one. Write down the new sens and again eliminate the worst highest or lowest sens remaining. If you found that the new one was better, repeat this paragraph, crossing out the worst lowest or highest sens until you get a 'worse' for the new sens.
Now you have two sens on the sheet above one you are 'worse', below the other you are 'worse'. Your ideal sens should be between them. Average the two sens by adding them together and dividing by 2, round to the nearest thousandth when you get decimals. Write down the average but don't test it yet. Instead, carefully test the highest and lowest sens remaining and decide which is worse, cross it out, then repeat this paragraph with the new two remaining sens until you can't for the life of you tell which of the two sensitivities are worse. Then average those two that were indistinguishable, and you now have
veryclosely pin pointed your mouse sens.
I tried this method from different starting sens and always come within .05 of the same value each time. In the process of writing this guide I did this whole process on three occasions, first time getting 1.181, then getting 1.200 and another time getting 1.155. That is pretty accurate but there is some normal variation but it's less than ?5%.
So why is it different each time? First off because you are feeling differently on different days, it may be worth it to test more than one time over a few different days and from various starting sens. After maybe 3-5 trials throughout a week's timespan, average the different final values you have determined and that will be your
long term perfect sensitivity.
That way no matter how you are feeling, you will be the closest to what sensitivity would be perfect for you on any given day of the week. This also means you don't have to change your sensitivity very often and when you do change it slightly (less than ?5%) you stay in your optimum "range" of good sensitivities. This is important, finding just one value and sticking to it! The mind likes consistency, and if you are constantly making big adjustments more than 5% up or down to your sensitivity you can expect to play inconsistently and have slumps more often.
I give further tips inside the file,
here:
http://hosted.filefront.com/antigen07You can play a demo by pasting it into your "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\*Your Username*\counter-strike source\cstrike" folder, then launching css and typing "playdemo sensfinding" into console without quotes.
Good luck finding a new mouse sensitivity
If any of you liked this snippet of the full article, please see the rest at its home on the CAL forums.
http://forums.caleague.com/showthread.php?t=96767
