The orientation of your mouse sensor may seem like a needlessly complex variable to consider, but for some players it can be a total game changer.
To know if you can benefit from this, open up paint, grip the mouse as if you were playing an FPS game, close your eyes, plant your wrist to one spot and then aim left and right a few times without adjusting your grip. Open your eyes and take a look at the angles of your lines.
In the image above you can see that the lines are significantly deviated from the horizontal. This is a fairly extreme example that is caused by a combination of hand size, mouse size/shape, mouse grip and general physiology. Depending on a combination of these factors, your lines may very well be totally horizontal so you’ll have nothing to worry about or change, but if they are deviated to any degree there are improvements to your aim that can be made.
If your lines are deviated, there is another test you can perform in paint where you close your eyes and pretend to track a target strafing left and right. This isn’t the most precise test, but it can do a good job of displaying one of the major problems with your sensor orientation which is the mismatch in your expectations for what mouse movements are needed for an aiming action, and what actually happens. We do a good job of compensating for the deviation, but it’s simply more efficient to not have to apply a ‘filter’ to your aiming and instead be playing with a 1:1 feel.
Skewed lines in the test also reveal problems with your range of motion. In the image above, aiming to the bottom right and top left is easily accessible, but aiming to the bottom left and top right is extremely difficult. Instead, we want our range of motion to be equally able to aim to the left and right.
Fixing Your Sensor Orientation With Software
Fortunately there is a solution to these orientation woes, and it comes in the form of RawAccel. RawAccel is a fully signed driver (it’s safe to use, anti-cheats don’t have a problem with it) that is typically associated with mouse acceleration players. Once you have it installed and opened, you can immediately ignore everything except for the ‘Rotation’ field, unless you are also interested in trying mouse acceleration.
This rotation field allows you to change the orientation of your mouse sensor. Set it to something high like -20 or 20 and you can quickly see how this works. To find the angle that works best for you, open paint and with your eyes open, aim left to right as if you were tracking a strafing target. It is imperative here to not force your lines to be horizontal, simply perform the mouse movements you associate with tracking on a strafing target. Set your rotation to -1 and do the same, then set it to -10, then -2, then -8 and so on. The goal is to have perfectly horizontal lines. Once you hone in on a number that is close to horizontal, feel free to move into the decimals if you want things to be perfect.
Configuring Your Sensor Orientation in KovaaK's
Playing around in paint is a good proof of concept, but if you would like to perform the rotation tests, or simply see how they feel, check out the ‘Sensor Orientation Tester’ scenario in KovaaK’s. In here, there is a horizontal line you can practice your tracking and flicks against with different rotation settings.
It is important to consider that larger aiming movements like a 180 degree turn may initially feel off, but you will adjust to this quickly.