Mouse acceleration is one of the most stigmatized sensitivity settings in first-person shooters. While there is a bigger learning curve to a varying mouse sensitivity, the disdain that mouse acceleration receives is unnecessary.

However, mouse acceleration is starting to be rediscovered for gaming uses, and it might turn into the norm for large-map shooters.

What Is Mouse Acceleration?

Mouse acceleration is basically when your mouse turns up or down its sensitivity depending on how fast or slow you move your mouse. It slows down the cursor movement if you’re trying to make small movements and increases it when you’re swiping fast.

However, what this does is that it makes your sensitivity inconsistent and unpredictable. You don’t know how fast your mouse is moving precisely, so it’s hard to make a judgment on how much you should move your mouse, which is not what you need in shooter games.

Not all mouse acceleration is made equal though. The most infamous acceleration implementation is Windows’ “Enhance Pointer Precision” that every basic aim improvement guide tells you to turn off. However, Quake 3 was one of the first games to actually have good customizable acceleration that many professional players used because it improved their performance instead of hindering it.

Check out how to turn off mouse acceleration in Windows 10 as this is pretty important when it comes to shooter games.

Why Mouse Acceleration Declined

Mouse acceleration has seen a decline in use as Counter-Strike was on the rise, beating the other FPS games. A member of Cyberathlete Professional League (a Counter-Strike esports organization) created the well-known thecplmousefix.rar file that almost every serious Counter-Strike 1.6 player used to remove mouse acceleration on their Windows XP computer.

The popularity of Counter-Strike and its community’s strong stance against Windows’ terrible implementation of mouse acceleration has resulted in the bad reputation that mouse acceleration now has. id Software has continued to implement mouse acceleration into the franchise, but the player base is extremely tiny compared to the popular tactical FPS games out there that don’t have mouse acceleration settings.

Mouse Acceleration for Gaming Is a Lost Art, and It's Being Rediscovered

Adjusting your mouse sensitivity is one-dimensional, making it easy to learn but not very versatile. While you can set it in a middle point between what would be considered "low" and "high" sensitivity, you can never really have the best of both worlds. The middle ground is a little too fast to be precise, yet too slow to do large target switching.

Aiming communities are rediscovering mouse acceleration with the wisdom of Quake players that are skilled at the game and use mouse acceleration. Quake is the only FPS game that has a significant portion of the professional player base using mouse acceleration. This is because there are numerous occasions where you'd need to do large movements like flicking down for a rocket jump and precisely sniping an enemy almost immediately afterward.

For games like Counter-Strike, doing quick 180-degree turns and large flicks to flying targets are rarely needed, which makes the need for mouse acceleration rare (but not unnecessary). However, this doesn't apply to other games as there are many games with enemies flying everywhere, coming from behind, and coming from multiple angles at once which is a pretty similar experience to the Quake games.

Unlike a singular middle-ground sensitivity that isn't slow enough for precision nor is it fast enough for large turns, mouse acceleration actually gives you the best of both worlds instead of achieving neither one. Mouse acceleration keeps your sensitivity low when you want to be precise, but it'll also increase it for fast mouse movements on large turns. However, it'll add another dimension to figuring out the right settings for you.

Speaking of good aim, you might want to find out what to look for in an FPS gaming mouse. The prerequisite to good aim is to have a mouse that doesn't ruin it.

You Should Give Mouse Acceleration a Chance

Mouse acceleration is one of the most underrated aiming secrets and we’re rediscovering its potential. With the growing aim-improvement community, mouse acceleration might be the next big thing, even in select titles, if more pro players from other games start to see its potential as well.

The most important thing to good aim, however, is practice. Practice is at the core of every good aimer, mouse acceleration user or not.