Consistent Mouse Sensitivity Between Games

Inches Per 360 Degree Turn

First you need to determine how far you want to move your mouse to do a full 360 degree turn in game. There is no perfect number based on your body measurements. Your ideal number will depend on your play style, body, and equipment. The further you have to move the easier it is to make small precise movements which can be good for sniping but will make it take longer to turn. The best thing to do is experiment around and find what feels most comfortable to you. I found my ideal number to be 7 inches for a full 360 degree turn.

Dots Per 360 Degree Turn

The number of dots per 360 degree turn depends on how the game was programmed and is often different between games. You can get this value from the sensitivity to degrees lookup table. The value is calculated by determining how many dots are sent from the mouse to do a full 360 degree turn using 1.0 in-game sensitivity.

In-Game Sensitivity

Sensitivity controls how fast you turn in the game. This value is set inside your game usually in the options menu under input. Sometimes only a slider with no values is shown in the menu but you can usually set an exact value using the game console or .ini settings files. Every game handles sensitivity in its own way. A lower sensitivity allows more precise movements, so it is usually best to set the in-game sensitivity to as low of a value as possible and increase mouse DPI to get the speed you want. However, if sensitivity values are set too low, or at fractions there can be rounding errors leading to less precise movements. It varies from game to game. 1.0 is typically a good sensitivity to use.

Mouse DPI (Dots Per Inch)

Mouse DPI is how many dots your mouse sends to your computer for every inch it is moved. On the desktop and 2D interfaces one dot normally translates to one pixel, but when you use it to look around in first person shooters it turns your view by arbitrary degrees set by the game. Most gaming mice have adjustable DPI settings but most non-gaming mice have a set DPI. You can adjust your in-game turning speed by changing your DPI. Most non-gaming mice have a DPI around 400 but a high end gaming mouse could have a DPI over 9000. If you do not know your mouse DPI you can estimate it by moving it 1 inch and counting the number of pixels it moves on the desktop.

This table shows the relations of dots to degrees per 1.0 in-game sensitivity for various games. All values assume direct mouse input with no smoothing or acceleration. The values are close estimations but may not be exact.

Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, Left 4 Dead and other Source Engine games are not listed separately because all Source Engine games use the same values for sensitivity.

Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 3 sensitivity behaves a little weird. More InformationYou can set your sensitivity to exact amounts in the configuration file \Documents\Battlefield 3\settings\PROF_SAVE_profile by changing GstInput.MouseSensitivity. A sensitivity of 1.0 takes 680 dots for a full turn, but a sensitivity of .1 takes 6550 instead of the expected 6800, and a sensitivity of .01 took 45530 dots but .02 took 27320. Values in the hundredths yielded inconsistent results that did not match up at all with the expected math, however tenths did. A sensitivity of .2 was exactly twice that of .1, and a sensitivity of .3 was exactly 3 times that of .1. Because of this I recommend setting your sensitivity to either .1, .2, .3, .4, etc., or exactly .01, otherwise the calculations will not be accurate. When you use the calculator enter in 1, 2, 3, etc. for the sensitivity value instead of .1, .2, .3 etc.

If you have any questions or would like to help add more values to the table please post in this thread.