Smooth exponential mouse acceleration

Question

Microsoft explains in detail about how mouse acceleration works from this site. I quote:

When the mouse moves slowly, the system moves the cursor at a constant rate that is directly proportional to the rate at which the mouse moves. But if the mouse moves faster than the value of MouseThreshold1 or MouseThreshold2 (available from RegEdit under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse), the system can respond by accelerating the movement of the cursor, so that the cursor moves two or four times as fast as the mouse.

My issue is the discrete/quantized nature of the mouse acceleration. Beyond a certain speed, it just suddenly leaps up to double, and then quadruple, rather than following a smooth exponential curve. This gives it an unnatural feel, subconsciously.

To give an analogy, it's like pressing the gas pedal on a car by a certain amount, finding it accelerating fine, but then pressing down just slightly more, and then finding the acceleration suddenly double up.

I'm using Win 10, but is there a mouse utility for any version of Windows which allow more finegrained control of the mouse? So instead of this which Microsoft does:

Mouse speed -> acceleration
1 -> 1
2 -> 1
3 -> 1
4 -> 1
5 -> 1
6 -> 2
7 -> 2
8 -> 2
...etc.

I'm looking for more like this:

Mouse speed -> acceleration
1 -> 1
2 -> 1.1225
3 -> 1.2599
4 -> 1.4142
5 -> 1.5874
6 -> 1.7818
7 -> 2
8 -> 2.2449
...etc.

Solution

FYI, that documentation is for the Windows 2000 registry. Not sure that applies to Windows 10.

I think that threshold style acceleration you quote was modified in windows 7 and higher.

The above acceleration curve for WIndows-10 was linked to on a comment at mouseaccel.blogspot.com, which is mainly about "povohat's mouse acceleration driver" for competitive gaming. I have not used that driver (and this is not a recommendation for it as I have no real knowledge of it).

Perhaps the registry settings are the same, but what happens at each threshold is less naive.

Comments

[Twinbee]

Interesting stuff. And what an ugly way to implement the idea based on legacy mouse values in the registry. That curve looks strange and quite arbitrary.

[Khalid]

@DanW It won't be arbitrary - if it's the official Windows stock acceleration-curve then it's likely determined through mass-testing and seeing what default curve works the best for the most people. If that curve is non-default then it's likely customized by someone specifically for themselves based on their preferred amount of muscle movement and physical mouse specs.

[Twinbee]

@Dai: I highly doubt that Microsoft developed this "Frankenstein" multi-curve for usability reasons, and instead compromised due to ease of implementation or legacy interfaces/code. A fully intuitive experience would make the curve continuous so as to adhere to POLA "principle of least astonishment". Imagine if you steered a bike or car, and a tiny left movement of the steering wheel made it jerk left more than you expected.