Mouse Acceleration?

I believe most sc pros play with a relatively low mouse sensitivity.

I've had acceleration on all of computer life and just recently bothered to disable it. I noticed no difference in my playing ability.

On June 18 2010 14:56 ProHellZerg wrote:
prodiG, are you sure it's okay to delete those "SmoothMouseXCurve" and "SmoothMouseYCurve" registry files in Windows 7? Wouldn't that disable the whole mouse? O_o

On June 18 2010 15:16 Chaoz wrote:
I used the MarkC method, but never deleted the registry file in Win7. Will it affect anything?

On June 18 2010 15:34 makopluxx wrote:
Does anyone know if windows 7 has built in mouse acceleration? I've turned off "enhance pointer precision" in the mouse options but I know that windows XP also required a registry fix. Do I need something like that for windows 7?

On June 18 2010 15:48 EleanorRIgby wrote:
only game you need mouse accel in is quake and unreal

On June 18 2010 15:50 KillerPlague wrote:
what is the benefit of turning off "enhance pointer precision"
that seems counter intuitive so if someone could please provide a brief explanation..
i really want to enhance my mouse control as well as keyboard use during the beta hiatus so thanks in advance for your info

On June 18 2010 14:56 ProHellZerg wrote:
prodiG, are you sure it's okay to delete those "SmoothMouseXCurve" and "SmoothMouseYCurve" registry files in Windows 7? Wouldn't that disable the whole mouse? O_o

On June 18 2010 17:33 Kow wrote:
I'd like to add that MacOSX can not natively turn off mouse acceleration. I used to play dota on a Mac and I had to bear with having mouse acceleration. Turning the mouse acceleration to max helped make the movement more consistent, but there's no way to actually turn off or even down the acceleration curve, which is the real problem with the acceleration on it. It has the weirdest acceleration curve I've ever experienced. If I were to try to land right on a point on, say, my desktop, I would almost always either land too close or too far. Moving too slowly would not move it fast enough and moving it too quickly would overshoot.

On June 18 2010 14:56 ProHellZerg wrote:
prodiG, are you sure it's okay to delete those "SmoothMouseXCurve" and "SmoothMouseYCurve" registry files in Windows 7? Wouldn't that disable the whole mouse? O_o

On June 18 2010 21:12 cocosoft wrote:
Do you really think it would exists a such flaw in Windows?
Still impressed by peoples computer paranoia.

On June 18 2010 14:50 prodiG wrote:
If you want t
o disable it forever, follow these steps:

start > run > regedit > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Mouse
select "SmoothMouseXCurve" and "SmoothMouseYCurve" and delete them both

then control panel > mouse and uncheck the "Enhance pointer precision" box. I've played quake for like four years now and I do this on every machine I image/own

EDIT: For the record, playing with acceleration on is a terrible, terrible idea. Anyone who tells you otherwise is one of:
a) a complete noob
b) never played something that isn't rts
c) hasn't changed gear since windows xp came out
d) troll
e) all of the above

On June 18 2010 15:50 KillerPlague wrote:
what is the benefit of turning off "enhance pointer precision"
that seems counter intuitive so if someone could please provide a brief explanation..
i really want to enhance my mouse control as well as keyboard use during the beta hiatus so thanks in advance for your info

On June 18 2010 21:47 sob3k wrote:



Will renaming these entries have the same effect?

I'm testing out no accel, but I want to have the option of going back if I can't get used to it.

I'm noticing that when I try to move my mouse the tiniest bit I can with mouse accel on, it moves like one pixel, but when I do this with no accel, it jumps like 4. My accuracy feels terrible...

On June 18 2010 22:02 InfiniteIce wrote:

You will have to reboot after changing the entries.

And yes, renaming the entries should have the same effect as deleting them, as the registry no longer sees the entry that it is looking for.

The thing with mouse accel on, is that if you move your mouse a tiny bit, your cursor will move a tiny bit. In the middle-area of moving your mouse, you will have approx a 1-to-1 ratio of mouse distance and on-screen cursor movement. Then, again at the high speeds, moving your mouse fast causes your cursor to move VERY fast. So, if you want to move, say, from the bottom left of your screen, to the top right, just very quickly, you will move the mouse fast, and you will overshoot your target due to acceleration. Your speed causes inaccuracy.

With it on with no accel, there is no difference in cursor movement at the low, mid, or high mouse movement speeds. That's why it feels weird now, you are not used to it at all. IMO, you will get used to it.

I had this off for the longest time, then built a new PC and forgot to disable the accel again. Just turned it off again, myself. It's normal that you'll feel a bit off for now...but definitely worth it in the end if you value being able to move the same amount of screen distance when you move your mouse hand a certain distance, every time, the speed of the movement not affecting where your cursor ends up.

Also: to those of you who are still having sensitivity issues, try turning your mouse sensitivity to the middle (6/11) bar in mouse settings. (Right above the enhance pointer precision box.) Tweak your mouse sensitivity of SC2, in SC2.

On June 18 2010 22:07 InfiniteIce wrote:


That is perhaps a limitation of your mouses DPI. I don't have that mouse, I cannot say for certain. Or, perhaps you have simply not practiced with it for longer than 4 minutes and your accuracy is not up to par? Nobody said you had to use it this way

But hey, practice makes perfect, and I think this helps TONS.

Edit:Try testing moving your cursor 1px at a time for a continuous movement. the first movement might be jumpy due to...crappy mouse gliding, crappy mousepad, something sticky (eww) on your mouse pad, whatever. Can you get it to keep moving at 1px at a slow, but continuous rate, after the first "jump" you experience? If so, things are working as intended and this is either a limitation of your mouse polling rate (unlikely) or you just need to clean your mousepad and get more practice with this.

(Edit: sorry for doublepost. I hit quote, meaning to type my reply and then copy paste back into the above post by editing, but forgot and just posted instead. Apologies)

On June 18 2010 14:50 prodiG wrote:
If you want t
o disable it forever, follow these steps:

start > run > regedit > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Mouse
select "SmoothMouseXCurve" and "SmoothMouseYCurve" and delete them both

then control panel > mouse and uncheck the "Enhance pointer precision" box. I've played quake for like four years now and I do this on every machine I image/own

EDIT: For the record, playing with acceleration on is a terrible, terrible idea. Anyone who tells you otherwise is one of:
a) a complete noob
b) never played something that isn't rts
c) hasn't changed gear since windows xp came out
d) troll
e) all of the above

On June 19 2010 04:33 Pharow wrote:
Does this really matter? I mean cmon, it seems more likely you will hurt your play by forcing yourself to relearn coodrination. Seems similar to the arguements for gaming mice/keyboards. If you have something that works that your familliar with, why change?

On June 19 2010 04:33 Pharow wrote:
Does this really matter? I mean cmon, it seems more likely you will hurt your play by forcing yourself to relearn coodrination. Seems similar to the arguements for gaming mice/keyboards. If you have something that works that your familliar with, why change?

On June 19 2010 04:45 Jimmy Raynor wrote:



Agree, man. The same people who turn off mouse acceleration will probably be the first to increase mouse sensitivity in game or trough windows options to compensate for that. So technically what will be the difference?

On June 19 2010 05:04 Inori wrote:
Can somebody confirm if I should have "Reduce mouse lag"on or off in SC2 options?

On June 19 2010 05:38 MiyaviTeddy wrote:
Does people even know what acceleration even does?

On June 19 2010 04:55 Wr3k wrote:
With mouse accel if you move quick to the left several times and then need to move back to center slowly your mouse will end up on the left end of your pad while the cursor is center justified. This causes you to eventually need to lift up your hand and move your mouse, which needless to say is BAD. Without mouse accel this problem does not exist, as your movements correlate to the cursor in a 1:1 fashion regardless of speed. The cursor does not accelerate or decelerate, it merely matches the speed of your hand. You cannot deny that having to pick up your mouse and relocate it to the center of the mousepad is detrimental.

Additionally with mouse accel if you need to simply quickly move to a specific point on the screen it will begin to decrease cursor movement speed exponentially with respect to your hands deceleration, increasing the time it takes you to click on specific points by a significant amount. Do you really want to be slower?

On June 19 2010 04:55 Wr3k wrote:
With mouse accel if you move quick to the left several times and then need to move back to center slowly your mouse will end up on the left end of your pad while the cursor is center justified. This causes you to eventually need to lift up your hand and move your mouse, which needless to say is BAD. Without mouse accel this problem does not exist

On June 19 2010 06:55 hoborg wrote:


This is why I'm trying to switch to no accel - it hurts my hand if I have to keep recentering my mouse!

But I'm still having the problem where there is accel in SC2 even though there is not on my desktop.

Can anyone please help me out be performing a little test?: Open up a custom map in SC2 and move your mouse on the mousepad in tiny rapid circles, keeping the mouse in the same spot. Does your cursor stay in the same spot or does it drift off like on my computer? I'm curious as to if SC2 has acceleration permanently on or if I've got some setting incorrect on my computer.

On June 19 2010 07:26 kineSiS- wrote:
If you are an FPS player you can do very well with the Accceleration. ^^ #1 in a Public CS server within 1 Week.

On June 19 2010 07:39 Error Ash wrote:


Oh gee, number one on a pubbie? That's so awesome... Anyone could do that with a joystick, touchpad, trackball, NES pad, ... And no, all the really good players, at least the ones i know it of (stermy, fox, cooller, etc...), play with mouse accel off.

On June 19 2010 07:46 Vimsey wrote:
Wr3K has covered this very well. When you first switch it will take getting used to and you will do worse with it. As to the above you wont find a top level pub player using acceleration in a top FPS let alone a comp player.

On June 19 2010 07:48 -ReMeDy- wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Razer Copperhead mouse (and perhaps other Razer mouses?) have acceleration off by default. According to my mouse panel, that seems to be the case, as both the "acceleration" option and "X-Y Master Sensitivity" is toggled off. In the Razer Copperhead help file, it also states in the description for "Acceleration":

ix. Acceleration
Turn on/off pointer acceleration and set acceleration level. Acceleration is not recommended for gaming.

^ I don't think they would say that and not disable acceleration by default, so I think I'm fine. My "enhance pointer speed" in my control panel was also disabled by default. I also disabled the registry keys. All these changes, yet no mouse difference, may mean I was playing with acceleration off this entire time without realizing it's a good thing.

On June 19 2010 07:50 calvinL wrote:


cooller, rapha, cypher, zero4, fox, all of them being extremely high level quake players, use accel

On June 19 2010 07:50 calvinL wrote:


cooller, rapha, cypher, zero4, fox, all of them being extremely high level quake players, use accel

On June 19 2010 07:54 kineSiS- wrote:
NVM. I lie. It took me Weekend + Sunday which is 4 Days. And I think I didn't use acceleration. But its necessary sometimes for quick turn arounds. O_O And yes back then I did not use a Razer s o its possible I didn't use acceleration.

On June 19 2010 07:52 Wr3k wrote:


Go ahead and let me know how many top CSS players or SC progamers use accel.

On June 19 2010 04:55 Wr3k wrote:With mouse accel if you move quick to the left several times and then need to move back to center slowly your mouse will end up on the left end of your pad while the cursor is center justified.

Additionally with mouse accel if you need to simply quickly move to a specific point on the screen it will begin to decrease cursor movement speed exponentially with respect to your hands deceleration, increasing the time it takes you to click on specific points by a significant amount. Do you really want to be slower?

Yes, at first it will take getting used to, you will feel awkward for a week or two but once you get accustomed to the new settings your accuracy and speed will increase significantly and you will rid yourself of that horrid need to pick up your mouse all the time after doing large sweeping motions.

With mouse accel enabled the ratio of X to Y changes depending on how fast you move over X distance with your mouse (I.e. your sensitivity is variable depending on your movement speed). This prevents your body from getting a sense of where specific points are on the screen without seeing the cursor. Someone skilled with mouse accel disabled could probably look at the screen a couple times and then macro a base with their eyes closed since points on the mousepad correlate to points on the screen. With accel enabled no such relationship takes place.

On June 19 2010 08:16 kzn wrote:


Well, yes. You've defined yourself right to your conclusion. The whole point of mouse accel is that if you move quickly to the left several times you dont have to move an equivalent distance to get back to 'center'.

Theoretically, with someone who is perfectly trained to use mouse accel, you can make any series of movements and get both your cursor and your mouse centered in one movement.*

*Although this would only really be true with a mouse accel that linearly modified your sensitivity with response to speed, rather than a stepwise accel function that is more common these days.



This is only true if your mouse speed operates parabolically. With or without mouse accel, if you go from a given speed to a stop instantly, your cursor will stop instantly. Technically, such an act is impossible, but the acceleration players are capable of placing on a mouse is such that the deceleration time could be brought so low as to make the sensitivity modulation during that time irrelevant.



This is only true because mouse acceleration significantly increases the complexity of the calculations involved in predicting the cursor movement generated by a given mouse movement. If it were possible to spend sufficient time as to master a given mouse acceleration function, it would be very slightly superior to playing without.


With mouse accel disabled you have a linear relationship. If you move the mouse X distance the cursor will move Y pixels regardless of how quickly you cover X distance. Your sensitivity is simply the ratio of X to Y.



Bolded is false, unless by "no such relationship" you merely mean that the relationship with mouse accel on is nonlinear.

There is a relationship, and it is theoretically possible to master it as we master linear relationships, but the effort involved is exponentially higher.


I do not make these arguments to claim that mouse acceleration is a good idea. In almost all cases, it is not - but in theory mouse acceleration is an advantage.

On June 19 2010 09:03 Wr3k wrote:1) Someone who is perfectly trained at returning the cursor to the center will have to artificially slow some strokes down to return to center effectively.

In a gaming situation moving your hand at specific speeds is a major hindrance.

Considering many games including SC require alot of quick actions that must be executed as fast as possible, you would really have to be superhuman to not eventually lose your point of origin.

2) Mouse speed does operate parabolically in the hands of a human. The human hand cannot instantly achieve velocity nor instantly stop and is therefore more or less parabolic when a quick smooth stroke is made.

On June 19 2010 09:26 kzn wrote:


Yes, but playing without accel on represents a permanent artificial slowing of movements at every point in time where your mouse speed is limited by your own ability to move it accurately.



Only if you aren't used to it, and this is only necessary if your main goal is to avoid lifting your hands. This is impossible to do perfectly in practice whether your mouse accel is on or off, so its really a moot point.



Nobody I know of thinks about their "point of origin" when playing SC, or anything else. At any point where a mouse action is required in SC (or something else), there are only three things that matter:

1. Where is my cursor?
2. Where does it need to be?
3. Can I make that movement without lifting the mouse?

The only question in there that can have a "bad" answer is 3, and mouse acceleration makes the totality of possible movements within a given space (namely, your mousepad) larger, and thus unequivocally makes the answer to 3 "good" more often.



It most definitely does not. We take our mice from rest to nearly maximum velocity within less than a second, and perform the reverse at the same speed.

On June 19 2010 09:38 Wr3k wrote:2) If you truly have mouse acceleration disabled & your mouse is 100% accurate (X:Y ratio of mouse movement to cursor movement remains constant) you will never have to pick up your mouse. (The mousepad and screen points of origin remain in sync).

On June 19 2010 09:49 kzn wrote:


This is only true if your sensitivity is such that your mousepad, scaled by DPI and sensitivity, represents more real estate than your screen displays.

This is not a given.

On June 19 2010 06:55 hoborg wrote:


This is why I'm trying to switch to no accel - it hurts my hand if I have to keep recentering my mouse!

But I'm still having the problem where there is accel in SC2 even though there is not on my desktop.

Can anyone please help me out be performing a little test?: Open up a custom map in SC2 and move your mouse on the mousepad in tiny rapid circles, keeping the mouse in the same spot. Does your cursor stay in the same spot or does it drift off like on my computer? I'm curious as to if SC2 has acceleration permanently on or if I've got some setting incorrect on my computer.

On June 19 2010 07:52 Wr3k wrote:


Go ahead and let me know how many top CSS players or SC progamers use accel.

On June 19 2010 10:24 sob3k wrote:
So, with my Logitech mini Optical, if I turn off mouse accel it jumps around and is impossible to be precise with. If I turn sensitivity down until I can move in 1pixel increments it takes about 3 feet of mouse movement to get across the screen. I'm gathering that this is because of the mouse's low DPI and I'm just going to have to keep mouse accel on until I can get a nicer mouse...is this about right?

On June 19 2010 10:16 InfiniteIce wrote:


SC2 does not force on mouse acceleration. I tested this last night. This goes for both with "reduce mouse lag" enabled and disabled.

On June 19 2010 10:34 Wr3k wrote:


Naw, you should be able to get it dialed in unless something is totally out of whack. I'm not sure what you mean with the 1px : 3 feet thing but you should be able to adjust your sensitivity in 2-3 places. If your mouse seems inaccurate or skips/jitters it could be due to low DPI.
1) Where your OS configuration is.
2) Inside SC2
3) In any additional software for your mouse.

You just need to play with those and find a sweet spot. For playing starcraft I would recommend making it so that 2.5-3cm of movement correlates to the width of your main monitor.

On June 19 2010 11:40 sob3k wrote:


I have maxed out OS and in SC sensetivity settings, the mini doesn't have any drivers for vista (source). The mouse is barely fast enough, but it jumps and is very inaccurate, if I turn down any of the settings until the mouse is accurate (until I can move it one pixel at a time) it takes ~3feet of movement to get across the screen.

Any other ideas?

On June 19 2010 11:40 sob3k wrote:


I have maxed out OS and in SC sensetivity settings, the mini doesn't have any drivers for vista (source). The mouse is barely fast enough, but it jumps and is very inaccurate, if I turn down any of the settings until the mouse is accurate (until I can move it one pixel at a time) it takes ~3feet of movement to get across the screen.

Any other ideas?

On June 19 2010 14:31 darmousseh wrote:
wow I just turned off mouse acceleration for the first time in my life. Feels crazy, I guess I'll get used to it until my wife complains lol

On June 20 2010 05:56 Skvid wrote:
after around 8 or so hours of pc activity i already got used to non-accelerated mouse.

Feels good, man

But here's the question: I played starcraft2 with mouse acceleration off already, i wonder if it will change anything now that i have both accelerations off. (and yea i know i can check, but im lazy to do so :/ )

On June 18 2010 22:09 sob3k wrote:


I turned my sensitivity down until I could move in one pixel increments...but now it take like 3 swipes to make it across the screen, this isn't going to work...