Don’t believe
the hype – laser wasn’t meant for gaming (till now).
At first glance today’s laser gaming mice looks awesome. The technical
specifications and features in gaming mice are constantly improving and have
now reached levels that would have been considered science-fiction just a few
years ago. The constant improvement in the technical specs (and the ridiculous
focus on these) means that the technical specs usually dominate the packaging
on gaming mice, explaining how dramatically improved this mouse is over its
predecessor or over similar competing products. All kinds of different manufacturers
promise the Holy Grail when it comes to describing what their mice can do. Laser
technology, 4.000 DPI, a high number of buttons, Burst-Fire-Button, glowing
colors, gold-plated USB connectors and “always on hyper ultra something”
are just some of the features that are offered to us, in the mouse manufacturers
quest of making their potential customer one of the top gamers in the world.
According to these companies every top gamer would be even better when using
a 4.000 DPI laser mouse. “For gamers by gamers”, “created
for gaming”, “the ultimate gaming mouse”, “hardcore
gaming” – you’ll find all these statements, and many more,
when browsing today’s gaming mice.
As a manufacturer of professional gaming gear our view is radically different.
High and inflated performance numbers, or fancy “ultra-hyper-power”
expressions, does not equal great gaming products. Period. SteelSeries is one
of the few companies where all hardware is actually tested by real professional
gamers. It’s our belief and guideline that if professional gamers approves
a concept, idea or product, our development of a product is heading in the right
direction. When we label something a “professional gaming product”
we do so because we believe it’s better than a “standard”
off-the-shelf product. Gamers use their computers, peripherals, and gear in
ways that demand much more than the average office user. They use their equipment
more rigorously, for longer periods of time, demand faster reaction times, more
power – when it comes to computers and peripherals, gamers have higher
requirements than any other consumer group in the world. Since 2001 we have
been providing gaming surfaces to these professionals, whilst improving on surface
quality and materials thanks to continued dialogue and feedback from the best
gamers in the world.
While we were working on our surfaces, gaming mice started evolving too. More
and more companies started labeling their mice “gaming” and up to
a point everything was fine and dandy. That all changed with the introduction
of “laser gaming mice”. Logitech released their G5/G7 and Razer
released the Copperhead. These companies ventured forth and promised 2.000 DPI
precision and a number of other benefits thanks to this new ‘fantastic’
laser technology. Many people followed the marketing call and bought these new
gaming mice, which seemed to boast awesome technical specifications. The reality
is that shortly after the market introduction of these laser mice we started
receiving complaints via e-mail. Hundreds of e-mails. Then thousands of e-mails.
For some of these products firmware updates eventually helped the mice reach
a performance level where only experienced and advanced users could tell that
the technology wasn’t on par with the old optical technology.
The problem with conventional laser mice
So what is the problem with laser? First of all, the laser technology was never
developed for gaming to begin with. The technology was originally developed
to improve tracking on glossy surfaces, on wooden surfaces (like desktops) and
the marketing buzz was all about “more surfaces”. It’s a sad
fact that even today many laser mice works awful on most of the plastic mouse
pads on the market.
Another problem with today’s laser mice is that they function using image
correlation. Meaning that the sensor snaps pictures of the surface, then compares
these pictures to determine the movement of the mouse. If the user performs
an “advanced movement”, which can include sudden deceleration, mouse
movements at a certain angle or something else weird, that couldn’t be
programmed into the robotic testing machines, the mouse will either stall or
try to “guess” the intended movement. This is not what we consider
“gaming grade”. A gamer requires precision and accuracy from his
gaming gear – not software that tries to predict and emulate his intended
movements. If these “gaming laser mice” had been tested by professional
gamers before their release, the test results would have clearly indicated that
they weren’t suitable for high level gaming.
It is our mission, both as
SteelSeries and individuals, to make products for professional gamers who demand
(and expect) high quality. Other companies (not all though;)) have high standards
as well, but fail miserably when it comes to actually testing their products.
We distance ourselves from marketing hype, bullshit and useless specifications
the same way as we distance ourselves putting features in a mouse that are beyond
pointless or added just to for marketing purposes.
Our approach to gaming mice:
Feature: Drivers. A mouse driver generally allows a higher
level of interacting between the mouse and the computer. In the driver all sorts
of features can be switched on or off and various kinds of fine-tuning (like
sensitivity) can take place.
Problem: Many mice utilize “advanced” functions
that only work properly if the driver is actually installed. This is in particular
a problem for professional gamers who often need to play on tournament computers,
where installing/uninstalling drivers is time consuming and sometimes even technical
impossible (due to closed systems).
Solution: Make the mouse driverless. The performance of the
mouse is the same, no matter if the computer has a driver installed or not.
Gamers can even program the macro features on the SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse
from home – and use all functions on third party computers without installing
software.
Feature: XXXX DPI for maximum precision/accuracy.
Problem: When a company mentions DPI in the same sentence as
precision, or anything else regarding better tracking, it is simply bullshit.
First of all the term DPI (Dots Per Inch) has nothing to do with mice. It’s
an expression from the printing world and shouldn’t even be used to describe
mouse movement. DPI is meant to describe the fact that for one inch of distance
you move your mouse on any surface, the equivalent number of counts are sent
to the PC - resulting in movement on your screen. The correct term for this
is CPI (counts per inch). You can achieve higher CPI in many ways: By having
a larger image, higher sampling rate, better light source quality, adding DSP
(Digital Signal Processor) power and having the right algorithm (prediction).
You can unfortunately also reach bloated CPI settings, by faking an increase
through software in drivers, firmware or windows settings. Let’s say you
make a movement of exactly one inch, from left to right, with your mouse. With
a 400 CPI sensor your PC would receive exactly 400 counts, and would move 400
pixels (the smallest visible movement) to the right (assuming you haven’t
touched any mouse speed settings in windows). Now we do exactly the same movement
with a 3.200 CPI sensor. With one inch of movement we move 3.200 pixels on the
screen. This has nothing to do with precision – but has something to do
with speed of movement. Your cursor (or crosshair) moves faster with 3.200 CPI,
but the precision of the sensor is exactly the same as neither sensor skips
a pixel. There is only one situation where a higher CPI count makes sense: if
the speed on the screen is too slow, you want to have a sensor that is capable
of more CPI, as everything that goes beyond it has to be calculated by software
and then you LOSE precision. As an example let’s say you double your windows
sensitivity on the 400 CPI sensor mouse and make the one inch movement described
above: now you just move 2 pixels at a time. You can try this easily for yourself
by setting your windows mouse speed to the max and making movements. You will
now notice pixel skipping. To summarize: High CPI settings does NOT equal ultimate
precision. High CPI settings will not make you a better gamer – as evidenced
by the fact that most professional Counter-Strike gamers use 400 to 800 CPI
in games. CPI settings only marks the highest on-screen speed you can achieve,
not the highest precision you can achieve. If you are using software to alter
your movements you will lose precision.
Solution: If you’re a gamer precision and accuracy is
vital, thus it is our belief that it’s much more important to have the
exact right CPI setting for your personal usage pattern, than to have high inflated
CPI settings. Our SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse uses a new technology –
named SteelSeries ExactSens. SteelSeries ExactSens is a new unique mouse technology,
which is very different from the normal CPI calculation utilized by standard
image correlation based laser sensors. Most current laser mice can only set
their true hardware “DPI“ in increments of 400 CPI without using
software. The ExactSens technology in our sensor enables us to set the CPI (in
the actual hardware) in increments of 1. So why is this important? If you examine
today‘s mice for professional Counter-Strike gamers you will see that
most mice use either 400 or 800 CPI. They use those specific values because
they can’t choose anything in between without a driver, but being able
to adjust the CPI settings would totally make sense. When other companies say
“fine-tune your DPI” you would actually in most cases just double
the speed you’re playing with, which is a really weird feature to offer
to a gamer. If you only want it to be 10% faster than with your previous mouse
you adjust the mouse to 440 CPI. 50% faster? 600 CPI is also possible. And the
result you get by using this technology is much more precise than just adjusting
sensitivity in Windows or in the game you’re playing. Note that the SteelSeries
ExactSense technology is also capable of setting the CPI as low as 1. If we
compare to other mice: The first laser mice that offered 2.000 CPI had 400CPI
increments only (and that was also limited). You had a driverless function for
tunable sensitivity, but in reality it only offered 4 settings: 400, 800, 1.600
and 2.000. By using the first two steps you would double your speed and the
mouse would get insanely fast. Less than 400 CPI weren’t possible. Neither
were steps in between those, without the use of software. If a SteelSeries ExactSense
powered mouse has 2.000 CPI it will have an availability of 2.000 hardware based
sensitivities. No less. Please note that CPI is not really a setting of precision
on the surface itself. It is merely the resulting on-screen-speed of the movements
you’re doing with your mouse. The 1-cpi increments enable you to SET the
speed as exact as you want it. Today there is nothing more exact than the SteelSeries
ExactSense technology. It is the defining tool to perfect your mouse speed preferences.
Feature: On-The-Fly CPI switching. Almost every mouse in the
market have the ability to switch between different CPI settings. Many of them
are saying that it’s “on-the-fly” used as a synonym for fast
reaction.
Problem: We use the term Actions Per Minute (APM) when referring
to gaming products and the inherent need for the user to do a high number of
operations while gaming. Our object is to reduce reaction time for the user,
no matter what commands he is issuing to his computer. With that in mind it
doesn’t make sense to utilize any “on-the-fly” feature that
requires 2 to 4 button presses to obtain the desired CPI. We very rarely see
gamers using more than two different CPI settings in same game.
Solution: Our toggle feature simply allows the user to set
2 exact CPI settings and then toggle between them. This will increase the APM
of the user (compared to a standard mouse) and help eliminate situations where
a user accidently hits the wrong CPI-settings.
Feature: Works on more surfaces than optical. This was the
biggest lie when laser mice for gaming was announced back in the day. “More
surfaces” should have meant “more ridiculous surfaces” (seen
from a gaming perspective).
Problem: Tons of gaming mouse pads, including our own, had
serious problems with the mice. It’s not because the pads are bad, but
because the conventional laser technology has very specific surface requirements.
If you called tech support at one of the bigger mice companies, they would probably
have told you that “you don’t even need to use a mouse pad with
our new laser mouse”. Which was somewhat true – the laser was capable
of sub-standard tracking on many surfaces. To gain precision and accuracy, you
need a mouse pad that offers consistent performance. And it’s not just
a question of precision, it’s also a question of comfort for anyone who
uses their computer for hours at a time. Gamers do that. Having people buy a
$100 USD gaming mouse, and not even recommend a mouse pad, is a tragedy. You
compromise the performance of the mouse and you give your new customer a bad
experience. It’s like buying a very expensive car and the dealer tells
you that the tires don’t really matter.
Solution: The forthcoming SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse uses
a drastically different approach, to eliminate the tracking problems found in
conventional laser mice. We still use the laser as a tool to light up the surface
area where we track information, but the comparison stops there. Our mouse utilizes
a sampling rate of 40.000 samples per second (SPS), but our SteelSeries XY2
chipset is using an advanced technology where we only need 4 inputs, compared
to the hundreds of inputs a conventional sensor requires to do image correlation.
The SteelSeries XY2 processor can thus process a significantly larger amount
of calculations than conventional laser mice. Furthermore the SteelSeries XY2
technology calculates the X and Y displacements independently which results
in total flexibility and freedom for the user.
Feature: Prediction and correction of movement. Let’s
say you’re trying to make a horizontal movement. Of course your hand isn’t
100% steady, so your line will have slight diversions and wouldn’t be
completely straight. Back in the day, the manufacturers of mouse sensors decided
to include a feature in the optical sensors of their mice, that would help people
draw straight lines. It would “remove” the small diversions, if
the diversion was less than a certain angle and instead just draw a perfectly
straight line. The funny thing is: This feature has never been marketed, though
it has been in countless mice over the past years. Can you guess why?
Problem: Prediction cost you precision. Period. If your mouse
is trying to predict your movements, instead of just performing the movements
you are actually doing, your precision is obviously degraded. If you want to
make a movement that is almost, but not quite, a straight line (meaning you
want to move a bit up and like half a screen to the right for example) then
your movement will be altered. This function of sensors kicks in pretty fast
and the worst part: in most sensors you can’t even disable it.
Solution: The introduction of SteelSeries FreeMove. This frees
your movement from pre-calculated or altered movements imposed by your sensor.
What basically happens is the following: As our sensor is programmable we let
you remove (recommended), keep and even tune the settings of this particular
feature. After conducting testing with gamers, it became painfully obvious that
prediction should be optional. FreeMove allows the user to completely disable
prediction– as well as utilize different degrees of prediction, as personal
preference dictates. Again, this prediction “feature” has never
been marketed, and we expect you will see several mouse companies remove the
feature in the future now that we have brought attention to it. This will hopefully
make future mice more precise for everyone.
Feature: Glowing lights/illumination. That stuff looks nice,
really, but after about 5 minutes it gets old. And it gets old fast.
Problem: We make professional gaming gear or “sports
equipment” for gamers to use another description. We don’t make
toys. A large percentage of our customers are older than 15. Have you ever seen
Tiger Woods with a golf club that glowed blue? Or Beckham with shoes that glowed
green? No.
Solution: Don’t make it glow.
Feature: Weight systems. The weight of a product can give a
feeling of quality. Weight in a gaming product is a preference. However most
people highly favor a low weight mouse. And when we say “most people”
we actually mean that not a single gamer we asked (out of thousands) felt that
an adjustable weight system was anything but useless.
Problem: The heavier the mouse is, the more strain is put on
your arm and especially on your wrist. The weight system itself is fundamentally
flawed for serious gaming: even if you remove all weights that came with your
killer gaming mice, the mouse will still be heavier than it should have been
– simply because the built-in weight system itself adds weight to the
mouse. The lower the weight is, the faster the reaction time can be. The lower
the weight is, the more control the user has. Why would you want a weight system
then?
Solution: Cut the crap.
SteelSeries Ikari
15 months of research and development went into the SteelSeries
Ikari mice. 15 months where we looked at ergonomics, technology, shape, motion,
hand grip and various play styles. From the very beginning our approach to this
project was to develop gaming mice based on input and feedback from professional
gamers. We did research and testing with our American partners in New York and
Dallas. We did testing with our European partners in Sweden, Germany, France,
United Kingdom and Denmark. We did testing and research in Korea and China.
The result is two gaming mice which feature the same chassis, but utilize very
different technology. Proven (and optimized) optical technology in the SteelSeries
Ikari Optical Mouse and groundbreaking new “gaming grade” technology
in the SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse.
Best regards,
Kim, Jonas, Tino and Jacob
SteelSeries Development Team
fragyou! the unofficial SteelSeries
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