BF2S Forums Tech: Open thread

there are so many factors and coefficients, here, to how 'accurate' your mouse feels and performs.

drivers, windows-level hardware acceleration ('enhanced mouse pointer accuracy' in control panel, etc), refresh/polling rate between your pointing device and USB hub, the type of mouse sensor you use and the type of surface you use with it, the lift-off distance, etc. to say nothing of program-specific zoom levels, magnification, mouse enhancement/acceleration, etc. even the PPI/definition and refresh rate of your monitor and viewing device have an effect; a mouse feels significantly smoother on a 120Hz screen than a 60Hz one.

i use a mouse on its very lowest DPI, 400DPI, and have low sensitivity on my windows. that means i have to effectively drag the mouse around a lot to get from one side of the screen to the other. but it 'feels' incredibly granular, and accurate. if i set it to its highest DPI, 3200DPI, it would skate across my screen in 3cm of hand motion. so there's really more to 'accuracy' than DPI. DPI just gets talked about a lot for marketing reasons, and because big numbers look better, i guess.

it sounds like your mouse sensor just isn't working very well. maybe it's old, has gunk in it, has been scratched or marked by dust, etc. i cannot think of a scenario in which even my 400 DPI mouse wouldn't be able to select things accurately.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-05 03:22:22)

why would you ever need to select an individual pixel? doesn't the application just, er, have a zoom function?

if you want on-the-fly changes to sensitivity, then yeah, get a mouse with adjustable DPI. some have buttons on the bottom, some have them near the scroll wheel. that or set-up a macro to change your actual program- or windows-level sensitivity using a button.

macro viability depends on the software or mouse driver/model you’re using. there should definitely be some solutions. i know that logitech used setpoint software for this. there is probably a way to just macro or shortcut the windows-level sensitivity itself.

as an aside have you tried toggling the windows pointer accuracy options? i believe that uses acceleration of some sort to ‘intelligently’ scale the sensitivity of your mouse, depending on whether you’re making large or minute movements.

you should also look into drawing tablets as an interface rather than a mouse. they are very good. the designers at my publishing house use them.

The electrons go pew pew

you have to tick one box in the settings to reverse the mouse scroll direction. the trackpad on the macbooks are pretty much universally recognized as their strongest feature, and the best advantage they have over windows thinkpads. you can set up about 6 different gestures to do everything you want with a simple finger swipe, pinch, scroll, paging motion, etc. that plus the force touch on the thing, which recognises different levels of pressure and feeds back to your clicks, and it's an incredibly well-implemented trackpad.

let me know if you have any questions about macOS generally. it's actually much, much better than windows for everyday browsing and working, in my opinion. even down to how it uses system memory ('RAM pressure') and how the native apps all tie-in to to the OS in a much more efficient and quick-loading way.

yeah fucking right is your dell or lenovo this useful. having a good keyboard and trackpad on a laptop is literally game-changing.

i would actually recommend the standalone magic pads (i.e. a large square thinkpad) over a mouse for most day-to-day applications. they're just that good and that useful. in productivity suites like adobe, or ableton for music, etc., simply no comparison. it's a genuine improvement over the mouse (and i say that as someone with an actual collection of super-snobby elite gamer-geek mice).

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-02 16:06:53)

I can appreciate both depending on the context. For instance on a commercial flight where space is limited I prefer using a full 10 button mouse along with a pro gamer mouse pad. In contrast when playing something like hots i like using a small, low profile touch surface.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

disagree. I find trackpads cumbersome and too sensitive. I like having the full hand control over a mouse. It's a personal preference. I can't watch that video at work. Is there anything on there that you can't do with a mouse?

yes, 20 things, dipshit.

it functions as a mouse, with single and double click ... but also a wide range of gestures that are tightly integrated with the OS and its features ... and haptic feedback ... and a 'force' touch that accesses unique app/OS features depending on how hard you press ... what mouse can do that?

it's also really hard to describe or account for how apple trackpads 'feel' until you use them a lot. they are not sensitive and do not skip around or go bezerk like some cheaper or less-well-implemented windows trackpads. they feel very 'granular', with a high level of detail, good amount of weight, etc. honestly it is a 100% improvement over a mouse for me for almost all of my desktop uses.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-03 02:41:24)

that's true, but the user interface of macOS with its multiple gestures, swiping, force touches, three-finger clicks, etc. is already remarkably well-implemented with their trackpads, in comparison to windows pointing solutions which still presumes everyone only has 2 fingers, a scroll wheel, and perhaps a side-button to go 'Back' on a browser (woooaaahhh!)





apple's laptops and their build are just superior in every way, and that's largely because they've got the main user interface so right. it's really all very tight and well-implemented.

(notable exception here in their last generation's keyboards, which were genuinely atrocious and universally reviled).

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-03 02:48:20)

keep your buttplug non sequiturs to yourself.

Anybody here ever cut the cable and switch to antenna for TV?  It turns out that if you get a somewhat large decently made directional one put in your attic and have them point it at your nearest big city, you get all of your usual local networks for news, sports and primetime programming, and as long as you're close enough and amp your shit properly, you can get a rock solid 720p/1080i picture with no pixelation, the same as if you had cable.  And it actually looks better than cable because at least in the US, the ATSC digital broadcast standard uses MPEG-2(typically used for DVDs) compression instead of MPEG-4(typically used for digital streaming) and has more bandwidth allotted for each channel than cable does.  Cable on the other hand compresses everything as much as possible to try to fit as many channels as it can into the available bandwidth.

We just recently switched to antenna and I think it's the coolest thing ever.  TV is the place where cable companies will play the most games with your bill by adding things on that you didn't ask for and this takes all of their power away.  The only thing you're paying for with antenna is the equipment and installation up front, and then whatever streaming services for premium channels you were getting with cable.  It seems like the way of the future, I'm expecting cable companies to start lobbying the FCC to fuck the free broadcasting standards up pretty hard if Trump wins again and keeps that telecoms puppet Ajit Pai in the driver seat.

3.3 stars. Do not buy