As a competitive gamer by profession (in FPSs), I've been thinking a lot about what could be improved in my peripherals. The main thing I keep coming back to is my mouse, not specifically "my" mouse but all mouses in general. Why is the sensor always in the dead center? It's so unintuitive and a pain to constantly keep yourself aware of the sensor's position to maximize your aiming accuracy. Most people just pick up the mouse and use it at that's the end of it, sorta "I move left, crosshair moves left, practice makes perfect". But there's so much at play here, the mouse is a relatively big object compared to the sensor and the precision you're asking from it, trying to think of the entire mouse as the point of reference for your crosshair movement is like trying to press small buttons with big fingers. You need to be aware of the exact position of the sensor to maximize the precision of your aim.
The thing that factors the most into this is something I'll call arcing, unless you're able to keep your mouse at the exact same angle relative to your desk (which is impossible), there will be discrepancies in how much distance different points on the mouse has traveled. That will make your aim inconsistent if you're using the entire mouse as your point of reference. But that's not all, the dominant part of your body when it comes to being able to make precise movements down to the millimeter are your finger tips. Being forced to used the center of your knuckles (that's the part of your body that most often lines up with sensor) as your point of reference robs you of the natural precision of your fingertips. Case example for this is using a pencil vs using a mouse to write in paint. The biggest reason using the mouse works so horribly isn't due to having to grip a huge object, it's simply because the point of reference is unintuitive. When you hold a pencil, the tip is close to your finger tips and it's very easy to discern where to tip is intuitively. That's not the case with mouses, the sensor is very far away from the finger tips. Try writing with a 3 finger grip while holding the pen at the tip, the center, and the eraser end and you'll notice the effect slowly deviates towards the way writing with a mouse looks like.
Point being, I'm 100% positive having the sensor located under the index finger would improve accuracy far beyond anything that the difference in performace between the PMW3310 and PMW3366 can bring. I'm not the first to have considered this, seen plenty of discussions about this, participated in plenty myself. Here's a snipet translated from a Chinese manufacturer talking about this.
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Front mount sensor
The position of the sensor greatly changes the basic characteristics and behavior of the mouse. It was sent back to us by many domestic gamers as feedback of DRTCM 0 series. The DRTCM 15 utilizes the advantage of the new sensor mounting area and shifts the sensor mounting position conventionally installed in the center boldly forward, places it on the line where the player's right hand, index finger and thumb intersect intuitively And pursued quick mobility.
In addition, the benefits of front mounting dramatically alleviate the phenomenon of dragging the pointer at lift, as compared with the mouse placed rearwardly, in conjunction with quick cutoff * and lift-off distance adjustment functions of sensor reading information at lift.
Depending on the position of the sensor the playability will vary greatly even with the same action.
If you have a mouse now, imagine that the sensor is positioned at the tip of the hand and hold your mouse. I think that you will be surprised by the difference in pointer operation feeling. Yes, that sense is the basic operation feeling of DRTCM15.
source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100621235442/http://www.dharmapoint.com/products/DRTCM15----------------------------
As depicted in the above, the DRTCM15 is the single example of a mouse I know of who places the sensor anywhere near the index finger.
Unfortunately this mouse isn't in production anymore, look around in chinese and japanese auction sites without luck too.
So if I want to go about testing this, does anyone know of any mouse on the market with this sensor position?
If not, I'd like to mod one but I've found that the mouses I currently own (other then the ones that I don't want to rip open just yet) have the sensor integrated on a large chip with everything else. I seen photos of mouses where the sensor was on a small chip of its own. So basically what I want to ask in this regard is if anyone knows of mouse that might have an interior layout that would make such of a mod... more simple?
If neither of the above feel free to jolt down your own thoughts on sensor position