How to Maintain a Consistent Mouse Sensitivity

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While playing multiple popular shooter games like PUBG, Fortnite, Tarkov, and Apex Legends on your computer, you might have noticed significant differences in gameplay. More specifically, your sensitivity differs drastically in areas such as shooting and aiming as you rotate through your favorite games. This can cause you to perform poorly as you constantly have to adjust your muscle memory between games.

Many times, this has to do with your in-game mouse sensitivity and DPI settings, which affect your gameplay. In this guide, we will describe the steps involved in achieving a more consistent sensitivity across all games, giving you the best gaming experience possible.

The importance of a consistent mouse sensitivity

Mouse sensitivity in simple terms is the number of pixels moved by every point your mouse moves. The phrase that commonly denotes the point density is the DPI or Dots per Inch. The importance of having the same mouse sensitivity across all your games is crucial.

  • Firstly, it allows for a seamless transition between titles. It is frustrating to start a new game only to endure a couple of matches of getting used to your mouse.
  • Secondly, different mouse settings can ruin your muscle memory, which will inadvertently lead you to go on a losing streak, as a different setting will prevent you from rotating the same distance in-game as you are used to. This will inadvertently lead to ineffective engagement, leading to a losing streak.
  • Finally, inconsistent sensitivity between games can cause you to overshoot or undershoot your target due to higher or lower mouse sensitivity settings, respectively, causing you to miss those critical shots.

These factors give rise to a significant hit in one’s gaming performance and overall experience. Continue reading this guide to learn how you could change the mouse settings to get a consistent experience across all titles.

The Ideal Mouse Setup

The first thing to keep in mind is your mouse itself. Many mice on the market today come packed with various features. One of the prominent features is the ability to change your mouse’s DPI setting, which can enable you to have more control over fine-tuning the sensitivity to your needs.

This feature may be present in the mouse itself as a button to select predetermined DPI values or can be tuned using the software and is highly recommended. We find that 800 DPI is the sweet spot for most gamers, but some do use 400 or 1200DPI or any number in between depending on their preferences.

Another thing to keep in mind is the sensor type. It is better to go with an optical sensor since laser sensors are susceptible to poor performance at lower speeds. Also, make sure to use a trackpad for optimal performance.

Setting up your system

Turn off Mouse Acceleration and Adjust the Pointer Speed

Now we go through the various software settings to keep in mind before changing the in-game settings. Mouse acceleration is a feature in Windows which tries to match the speed of the cursor with the speed of your mouse. This causes you to overshoot your target when to move your mouse too fast, and as a result, you should disable it.

  • First, open up the Windows Control Panel,
  • Select Hardware and sounds
  • Next, select the Mouse property setting usually found under Devices and Printers.
  • Then select the Pointer Options tab and uncheck “Enhance Pointer Precision” to disable mouse acceleration.
  • Also, make sure the pointer speed setting is at 6 out of 11 for the best accuracy.
  • Lastly, don’t forget to click apply and Ok to finalize these changes.

If your mouse comes with software for controlling it, make sure you follow the instructions to download and install it. We will be needing this software later to change our DPI settings. Move on to the next section to learn how you can maintain the same sensitivity across all of your games.

Achieving a Consistent Sensitivity across all Titles

To achieve consistent sensitivity across all games you play, you must first determine which one game you perform best in and play most often. This is because that game’s sensitivity will be the baseline from which you will reference and apply to all the other games you play.

Next, follow these steps to translate the same sensitivity of the game you perform best at of which you determined above to experience consistency across all your gaming titles.

This method assumes that you maintain the same mouse DPI across all games.

  • Step 1: After launching the game you perform best in and feel most comfortable with, head on to a practice map to that test out different settings without any hindrance.
  • Step 2: Then head on to your game settings, and in the inputs tab and enable the Raw Input option for your mouse for accurate tracking. The availability of this feature may vary between games.
  • Step 3: Next, slide your mouse from right to left (or vice versa) across your mouse pad and measure the distance your mouse must move for your character to do a 360-degree turn using a ruler or measuring tape (to be more exact). Or simply mark the point where your player has completed the 360.

Do this for both for regular and ADS field of views if you have different sensitivity for each. Though we prefer to have the sensitivity for both views the same.  

Now you can apply that sensitivity across all the other games you play. To do so, go to another game of which you would like to add that same sensitivity to:

  • In the second game, repeat step 1 and step 2 from above. 
  • Next, try to achieve the same distance measured in step 3 above by adjusting the sensitivity of the second game until it takes the same amount of distance for the player to make a 360-degrees rotation. It may take some trial and error, but you will eventually achieve it.

Do this for all remaining games you would like to have a consistent sensitivity level with. This will allow you to game and maintain muscle memory seamlessly across various titles and even significantly improve your gaming performance. You can also try a mouse sensitivity calculator though we preferred the method above. We hope you enjoyed this guide.

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