On the hunt for the perfect mouse - Page 3

The G400's sensor has two "native" DPI settings - 800 and 3600. 400 and 1800 are achieved by throwing half the counts away from these values before the data is sent over USB. This is exactly the same way that the MX518 worked, except that there was no 3600 native setting - the maximum was 1800.

LGS does not introduce "jitter" (the appropriate term is "ripple" - jitter is when the cursor moves with no physical input), and the observed behavior is not the result of an attempt to work around angle snapping. The ripple behavior is from the sensor of the mouse being pushed to its limit, and the ripple effect may be more pronounced on some textured surfaces.

At 3600 DPI, the sensor is much more sensitive to patterns (regular or irregular) in the surface than it is at 800 DPI. It is also more sensitive than the MX518 at 1800 DPI. This is why at 3600 DPI on a table with a high-contrast wood grain you can see a lot of skipping around.

The way 8.01 and below worked was to set the mouse's internal DPI value to 3600 and downscale from there. There was, obviously, a visible side effect that resulted from this. Since the 3600 DPI setting produces more visible ripple during tracking than the lower 800 DPI setting, particularly on patterned surfaces, taking that input and throwing counts away from it results in behavior with LGS running that is different from the behavior without.

As of 8.12, we are setting the DPI value of the mouse to the next highest value and downscaling from there. So if the value you want to set is 750, we downscale from 800. If it's 850, we downscale from 1800. This will mean that DPI settings above 800 will still not produce the same perfect lines that 800 and below produce. They will be closer to the lines that 1800 DPI produces. Below 400 DPI will be scaled from 400 DPI. And above 1800 DPI will look more like 3600 DPI.

There are many surfaces that are not optimal for optical sensors. One of the biggest downsides of optical sensors is that they are more surface-dependent than laser sensors. For best performance it is recommended to use a surface that is fairly uniform and does not have a lot of high-contrast lines/patterns or a glossy finish on it. A solid-color cloth pad is one of the more optimal surfaces to use for optical sensors. This is particularly true if you will be using the mouse at over 800 DPI, as the higher the resolution the more potential there is for the sensor to report erratically.