Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus tonight I am joined by Chris pate from Logitech and we are talking about mice and sensors and sensor technology today we've previously discussed keyboard technology and switches with Vincent also from Logitech and that went live their impact prior now we're talking about mice so there is a new Mouse that just came out it was announced the G 303 the 303 has some a heavier focus on the sensors precision and uses a similar body to the G 302 302 so that's what's going on in terms of mice are there any major misconceptions with gaming mice that you feel like gamers should better understand the biggest thing that that probably should be made clear is that dpi is really about just cursor sensitivity it's not a measure of accuracy or precision and it's not a focus of development like for the sensor that we are the high-end said that we've got in the 502 302 we developed that with the idea that we're just going to create something incredibly accurate and responsive and then after we've figured out how to do that we said okay how high can it go are there any other any other items with gaming mice when we're looking at specifications that as gamers we should be paying more attention to so really the most important thing and it's not a pure specification is the overall accuracy of the sensor right so when you you hear a lot of people talking about inaccuracy or speed really the accuracy variance or resolution error versus speed but most of the time you'll hear it is as acceleration so what that means is that for a given physical distance that you move a mouse depending on how fast you move it the distance to the cursor moves on-screen can change there's a level of of in accuracy that people can't pick up on but after it exceeds that level it becomes really annoying to try to game with muscle memory so with sensors that we label is Delta zero it is as close as possible to perfect accuracy as you can actually get what about mouth smoothing can you what what is mouth smoothing what is its purpose and should gamers have it or not have it so what smoothing does is it compares multiple frames of data from the sensor against each other in order to literally smooth out the day that it's being sent to the system so in some cases a if you are moving the cursor along you'll see little blips up or down they're kind of spurious motion like that it's called ripple and smoothing literally it compares multiple frames of data against each other to remove or it's a lesson that ripple so one of the side effects of this is that depending on how many frames of information you're comparing against each other like you can have multiple milliseconds of delay between what the mouse is doing and what the cursor is showing on screen smoothing is a smoothing has a negative impact on cursor feel particularly at startup so from zero to moving smoothing increases the time between when the mouse starts moving and when you actually see the cursor move and it becomes more perceptible as frame rates go higher and as monitors start to refresh faster so it's more easy to pick up on 120 Hertz around 44 Hertz monitor than it is on a 60 Hertz monitor what about a mouse acceleration is is that a also something we don't want a Gary Mouse or in general yeah acceleration or or speed relative accuracy variance is detrimental to the gamers ability to play by muscle memory to do repeated motions through practice without having to to rely solely on what they can see and so you just said I think speed related accuracy very high accuracy variance is there a reason you're using my vs. so acceleration implies that it's an inherent feature of the sensor when really it's a it's a characteristic that is made visible by changing the speed that the mouse is moving right so the depending on how fast the mouse is moving you can get different the degrees of motion on-screen so it's an accuracy issue that is exposed by changing physical speed of the mouse so with the g502 and the G 302 303 sorry the we're using the pmw 33 66 which is the most advanced sensor that we have access to and the the really kind of great thing about this sensor is in addition to the fact that it's got zero smoothing across the entire dpi range so either from 200 for 12,000 you don't have any post-processing that will add latency to the cursor in order to mitigate rip polar or other spurious motion but it was not designed with the intent of pushing the DPI up it was a design with the intent of creating as pure and and connected if a cursor experience or point of view experience as you can get with with current technology right so we first designed the sensor and then we said okay now that we've got this great experience with zero smoothing how far can we push it and keep the same experience and 12,000 is is where we decided to cut it off and ultimately I guess as a buyer you probably want to look at other features in the mouse aside from the DPI number certain including the controller used or the or the sensor I should say that's used yeah absolutely in terms of dpi is that a is that a marketing heavy number at this point is does it still bear weight where does it bear relevance to the consumer so dpi is literally just sensitivity you know so 12000 dpi is just more sensitive than 10000 dpi that's it the cursor moves faster we're not trying to like say you need 12,000 dpi to be more accurate this is what the sensor is capable of so we're giving you the to access it you can use it or not we're trying to give people more margin than they need right same thing with like the sensor can track it up to 300 inches per second the majority of people will never exceed like 80 inches per second base of our testing right so for pro gamers who make a ton of money by relying on this hardware to do exactly - what they needed to do or exactly what they expected to do the ability to be totally confident that you can't move the mouse faster than it can actually track is incredibly beneficial so a mouse is tracking on a 2d plane or moving the mouse on a 2d plane but we're interpreting it for a 3d gaming space what are what are some of the concerns in that scenario as it pertains to design sensors it's maybe outside a lot of tech science sensors or making sure that data is received accurately by the game and so this this ditz gets really complex and by default every count that it receives from from from the mouse driver turns like some million 0.22 degrees right and what you're trying to do is is ensure that you don't have a level of sensitivity versus a level dpi that causes you to jump from pixel to pixel and potentially miss a head shot or something like that so there's a lotta arcane and and almost voodoo math that goes into ray into making these decisions but pros have kind of settled on 400 or 800 dpi as being their preferred starting point and they adjust their sensitivity to what feels good ultimately it's just like any other component of the mouse right the shape you you buy a shape that's comfortable right that's what you start with you you try to find a sensor that performs the way that you wanted to initiate this comfortable and you try to find settings that are compatible with in the game and the mouse sensor and mount of shape that are that are going to give you a comfortable experience attitude so it's all about setting it up so that it feels comfortable and natural to you so that you can not have to worry about compensating for any kind of irregularities and just focus on the game itself right so for more information on mice sensors the hardware links in the description below the g3 o3 we already have an article online for that so check that out and that is linked for you as well and we'll see you all next time thanks for your time Chris it's your thing thank you you