When you look at the gaming mouse settings of professional players, you will see that they have disabled their “mouse acceleration” most of the time. There are also gaming mice on the market like Zowie’s FK1 who advertise with “having zero mouse acceleration“. This is why I want to answer the question: “What is mouse acceleration after all“?
Explanation: Mouse Acceleration
Mouse Acceleration can be explained quite easily: For every inch (or centimeter) you move your mouse on the mouse pad, the cursor on the screen should move a fixed distance as well. In this example, one inch mouse movement should generate one inch of cursor movement. Of course this cursor distance should not differ depending on how fast you move your mouse.
Not with mouse acceleration though: when you activate mouse acceleration, the distance that your cursor travels will also depend on the speed you move your mouse with! If you move your mouse faster, your cursor will also travel a higher distance than when moved slowly. To stick with the example above, your cursor will move more than an inch when you move your mouse faster across the mouse pad. While this effect might be benefitial for casual pc users, it can be highly annoying for us gamers as it interferes with our natural mouse movement.
Positive Mouse Acceleration
Positive mouse acceleration means that the higher the speed you move your mouse across the mousepad, the further the distance the cursor travels increases. This effect is quite common across different gaming mice.
Negative Mouse Acceleration
Negative mouse acceleration means that the higher the speed you move your mouse across the mousepad, the lower the distance the cursor travels on your screen. This effect is not really common and if it occurs, it is often due to a bug in the mouse sensor.