500Hz USB mouse polling in XP SP3

Yes! What Malor said is absolutely true. I don't know how old he is, but I am 28 and have been playing PC shooters since I was 10. I can tell you that I have not lost my reflexes yet. There have been many a time where I would subconsciously react and shoot before my conscious mind would realize what I had just shot at...and hit with startling accuracy.

I have a pretty unique background. I started off playing Quake 2 and 3 using a high sensitivity. When those communities floundered I moved onto Counter-Strike, where I lowered my sensitivity and started using a larger mouse pad. I returned to Quake Live a few years ago and found I hadn't lost my touch. I am very good at all the above (instagib FFA or insta-CTF in QL since I quit dueling when I left for CS), near-pro level and have been accused of cheating by some pro's.

First, I will say that high-level CS is more demanding of pinpoint fast accuracy than Quake. When Quake targets become small, they tend to be farther-away and thus move more slowly. In addition, you could modify your FOV to give yourself custom zooms. Well, there is nothing like a CS model you are trying to hit headshots on - they are small targets, but they are still moving quite fast. Then there is the additional demand of controlling your recoil. I realize that UT had the headshot capability but the effect was blunted by other variables in the game.

Sorry to Shihonage who said he would leave this thread on page 1 but persisted onto page 2. But claiming to be a "good UT player" (how big was that community compared to Quake or CS, anyway?) and then posting performance screenshots with questionable opponents (one of them being against a team with 80-130 pingers) isn't going to convince most high-level gamers that you played at a demanding, high level.

I am not a techie at all but I started looking up the mouse polling rates because my G3 mouse broke (which I recently found out is set at a default of 500hz) and I could not find it anymore. I had to pick up an older MX300 and order some G1's from Asia, which apparently poll at 125hz by default, which would partly explain why they look and feel much more "flaky" than my G3 did (although the G3 also had a higher DPI.) I will try out this fix tonight to see if I can return to the smoother look and *feel* of my old G3. Thanks for the "snake oil", Legion.

Boy, it's really weird how this particular thread pulls long, impassioned responses from people we've never seen anywhere else on the site. Months later, even.

Malor wrote:

Boy, it's really weird how this particular thread pulls long, impassioned responses from people we've never seen anywhere else on the site. Months later, even.

Blame Google. I did a simple search looking for help, and I found help, only to be drawn into a debate making mockery of the help I was seeking.

Aha! That would explain it.

Yeah, sihonage doesn't really post much here anymore, but I agree with you and disagree with him pretty sharply. Polling rates do matter; whether he happens to be wired that fast or not, some people are. (I used to be, but, sadly, no longer am.) It looks like some of the mice from Logitech and Razer are coming up with ways to do 1000Hz polling in Win 7; they must be dodging the Windows 7 native USB drivers, which I think are hard-wired at 125.

I haven't bothered looking into it myself, since it doesn't matter to me anymore, but I'd suggest looking at the Logitech G400 and G500... I'm pretty sure at least one of those two is advertising 1000Hz polling on Win 7.

edit: whoah, it's been a long time. This thread is more than three years old!

One more comment, regarding physiological limitations and the technological interface.

I've been hearing for years that humans cannot detect anything higher than 60 FPS or 60hz when it comes to displays. I am highly skeptical of this assertion (has it been disproven, yet?) Perhaps no one has bothered to investigate, but I hope one day some rich bastard can conduct a study enlisting high-level FPS gamers to play on a specific display set at 60hz and 100+hz and see if they can tell which setting feels better to them. I strongly believe that the null hypothesis (i.e. that they can't tell the difference) will be void and it will be proven that people can make a discernment.

That may or may not translate to a significant performance difference, between players and within the same players themselves. I can think of other studies that could test for display-dependent accuracy as well. However, in their absence, it seems...well, small-minded to tell others that they can't when they say they can.

And I'm someone who convinced another high-level CS player to not force himself to keep with CRTs by the fact that I played well with my 17" 12ms response time LCD monitor at 75hz (with who knows how much input lag.) The human brain is remarkably good at compensating for the lack of "data points", to use the analogy the electrical engineer in this thread used. And as time goes on we have been discovering more and more things about our brain's capabilities that in the past we thought were "impossible". Obviously I am not on the bandwagon of players who feel they always need the newest, priciest and gimmicky stuff that people want to sell. There IS a point when something is "good enough".

Edit: And to speak about human "wiring" - I sure hope I don't lose my reflexes too soon. The day they are gone I know I will miss them. I keep demos around so that I could prove to my someday-children or grandchildren that I did have them.

I haven't moved over to Windows 7 yet. It annoys me that they would fix the polling at 125hz...why do they do that? I cannot use most of the fancy-shaped newer mice. They tend to be too big for my hands and have odd lumps and shapes that do not contour well for me.

I've been hearing for years that humans cannot detect anything higher than 60 FPS or 60hz when it comes to displays.

Well, when I was using CRTs, I required a minimum 85Hz refresh rate to not see flicker. I'm not sure if that's still true, but at least when I was young, I could instantly tell if a CRT was at 60hz.

I peaked at about 28, where you are, and started to noticeably slow down by about 32, and am quite slow up here over 40. So enjoy it while you have it.

I haven't moved over to Windows 7 yet. It annoys me that they would fix the polling at 125hz...why do they do that?

Because they let their mental models replace reality. People SHOULDN'T be able to detect the difference, therefore they cannot, therefore we will lock polling at 125Hz. But there is a huge difference between conscious and subconscious reaction times, and when a good player is really in the groove, they're just unearthly quick.

I cannot use most of the fancy-shaped newer mice. They tend to be too big for my hands and have odd lumps and shapes that do not contour well for me.

I'm using the MX518, which I find very comfortable. The new G400 is the replacement. I don't know with certainty that it'll do the fast polling, but I think it does.

Don't the R.A.T. mice also poll up to 1000Mhz? They're pretty customizable shape and size wise.

*Legion* wrote:
foe wrote:

I told you, you sha'n't have the last word.

Although Lord knows certain posters have a talent for steering dialogues in that direction, I think you'd be well served to drop some of the combative tone of these posts. Let your points stand on their own, rather than framing them with a "you'll never get the last word" schtick, which just makes you appear to be arguing for the sake of an argument. Even if the use of "sha'n't" is amusing.

It was a (failed) reminder to myself to refute (what I deem to be) misinformation, and an observation that his is the style of argument that you describe while I am of course totally free of the effect of the confirmation bias and the disconfirmation bias and have never ever been wrong.

shihonage wrote:

You can't first refer to Quakeworld as "even that 12-year-old game" to support your argument, and then isolate its tweaked-out version in 2008 and a very specific case (T1/LAN play) to support your argument, again. It's either one or the other, and neither one of those actually works. The first case is simply untrue, as I debunked it earlier with simple facts of 1996 hardware. The latter case you cite is a rare exception rather than the rule, and therefore, it doesn't count for anything.

You ignore all the gaming that occurred on LAN, for one instance all the serious tournaments, and there were people with <1/77=~12.9 ms pings back in '96 '97 '98 '99 '00 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 oh sh*t! now its the norm. "then isolate its tweaked-out version in 2008" - there is no significant out-tweakage that bears on this, those playing on LAN or with <13ms connections in the beginning proper configuration of /rate and /cl_maxfps. (And remember Qizmo packet compression, for when the latency was willing but the bandwidth was lacking).

shihonage wrote:

I am not sure you fully understand what you're talking about in terms of latency and "tic rate". Since you tie them together in an attempt to prove something by using one variable as a function of another, it appears you actually believe that the two are linked. They're not.

Bare assertion and false. Throughout the history of QuakeWorld the network fps has been the physics fps (originally 72 and soon after 77), those players with a latency below various multiples of this rate 1/77=~12.9ms 2/77=~25ms 3/77=~38... had significant advantage in terms of reaction speed, and lack of erroneous interpolation, all stable pings are one of these multiples (non stable pings are the average of neighbouring multiples).

shihonage wrote:

Your link to the mouse review article is merely about a bunch of nerds (and I say this without mockery, as I am one as well) doing calculations under the microscope. It is just numbers, ones that carry little significance in reality of imprecise, organic human-computer-internet-computer-human interaction.

1m/s negative acceleration is well within the constraints of humans playing with a low sensitivity mouse. The reason high, and (sometimes drastically high) mouse sensitivities predominated in '96 '97 '98 '99 '2000 '2001 was because with lower sensitivity it was impossible to avoid hitting the hardware limitation of negative acceleration (that is past a threshold speed the mouse will behave as if it were moving at that threshold speed, no faster).

shihonage wrote:

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. I never timed my mouse movement speed. That said, I'm not a cyborg... and neither are you. My FPS skills remain unaffected as long as the mouse I use stays above 80hz refresh. After that, the mouse becomes margin of error rather than defining factor of my game.

I frequently took second or first place on the winning team using 80hz with an old-ass, $10 generic PS/2 mouse. Should've taken more screenshots.

IMAGE(http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7912/mopped2qf5.jpg)
IMAGE(http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/6348/barnburnerlo6.gif)
IMAGE(http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/8612/moppedmr7.jpg)

Nice appeal to your own authority as, we are to believe, an 3l33t pwner. Tragically it is needful to say that Unreal is a piece of sh*t game with an extremely low skill-ceiling (which Unreal? all of them.) and it has sh*t net code. QuakeWorld is ~infinitely better than all its mutant progeny q2, q3, q3cpm, painkiller, warsaw, unreal, etc. which in turn are ~infinitely better than all the simulations of grunt warfare where the be all end all is a few bullets swiftly delivered in a fraction of a second, and the only skill dimensions are speed and accuracy of pointing-clicking. This is not a matter of opinion, it is demonstrable science, (no irony I mean this).

I probably sha'n't have the last word, because you're an indefatigable arguist, see you in another four years maybe.

UT99 had a low skill-ceiling? That's a nice way of calling me a sh*t player for all those years. I was pretty good by the end, but it was hard-fought. Instagib required so much tactical acumen that watching my brother play completely blew my mind.

Ridiculous argument is ridiculous.

Just let it die already.

So in four years this is the only post foe posts on?

Mice are serious business.

I can't believe he took the time to type all that sh*t. Whoa.

I came here expecting to see a spambot.

For months, foe woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

"What is it? What have I been forgetting to do?"

Haha, every time I see this thread pop back up, I wonder if that idiot has come back to argue more.

Today that answer is: YES

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was hoping to see this debate continue. We can only hope that shihonage felt a disturbance in the force, and will return to do battle once more.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was hoping to see this debate continue. We can only hope that shihonage felt a disturbance in the force, and will return to do battle once more.

I like this thread.. because its proof that I'm not involved in every dumb needless argument.

TheGameguru wrote:

I like this thread.. because its proof that I'm not involved in every dumb needless argument.

You are now.