MANG3067 Accounting Coursework
The modern gaming mouse and mouse precision as a measure of performance

Keywords
LED (Light Emitting Diode), Precision, DPI (dot-pet-inch), digital image correlation, APM (actions-per-minute), RTS (real-time-strategy), g (measure of acceleration)

Abstract
This short article describes the functionality of a gaming mouse and discusses the financial impact of changing the precision of mouse.

Functionality
A gaming mouse is high-specification optical mouse. Optical mice consist of 3 core functional parts, namely, the light source, the optoelectronic sensor, and the mouse casing. Light from the source illuminates the surface which the mouse is present on and the sensor takes successive photographs of the surface. By comparing the successive images using a digital image correlation algorithm, the mouse calculates the displacement and sends the movement data to the computer. Figure <> shows the cross section of an optical mouse.

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Precision
Modern gaming mice focus on developing the poll rate, precision and ergonomic design of the mouse to improve user experience.
Modern gaming mice have high polling rates, typically 125 – 1000 Hz. This corresponds to a response every 8 – 1 ms, where the lower the lag time, the better the response of the mouse in time sensitive scenarios.

The precision of the gaming mouse is largely user-specific measure. It refers to the sensitivity between the physical displacements of the mouse to the pixel displacement on screen. High-end mice typically have configurable sensitivity toggles to allow user to change the sensitivity on an ad-hoc basis but newer technologies use user usage patterns to create a profile which allows for more intuitive change in the sensitivity. [1]

Competitive RTS gamers typically require an APM of at least 200 while the maximum ever recorded is 800. This is impossible to achieve without a mouse that is accurate a high accelerations (>15g) and good response time (<2ms, >500HZ).

The ergonomic design largely caters to the style in which people use mice. Broadly speaking, mice grip styles fall into 3 categories [2] – the palm grip, the claw grip and the fingertip grip. The advantages and disadvantages of each are largely eclipsed by the personal preference of each user but as a general rule, the greater the points of contact between the mouse and the hand, the greater the apparent control.

Although mouse precision refers to the DPI of a mouse and is the industry standard in comparing the performance among mice, the performance of a mouse is a composite function of its polling rate and its DPI.

Cost variance on performance features
Mouse performance can be improved by increasing its polling rate or by employing smarter DPI measuring algorithms.

A comparison of the maximum polling rate to cost of mice shows that (Figure <>) mice that price of the mice increases with the maximum polling rate. However, most gaming mice tend to have a maximum polling rate of 1000hz, so within this threshold, the variation in cost is due to other features.

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Similarly


References
[1] razer Chroma