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Posted by
Toby Crundwell
on January 08, 2002
Company: GWS
Product: The
Rotokiller
Find
low prices for Input
Devices here.
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968
dpi ball tracking movements as low as 0.0036"
(about the width of a human hair), clutch function
-
Drivers
capable of 16 bits per axis per packet (up to 256 times
more than other mice)
-
6
membrane switches with button shifting, 16 functions
available at any one time
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Programmable
back-lighting (red and red, four modes of flashing)
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Top
mounted cord - illuminating cord drag
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Game
manager customizes and loads over 60 exportable mouse
control settings per game
More
advanced information about the 720 can be found here.
The
720 is possibly the most accurate device I have ever used. I
usually stick to trackballs for their accuracy, but I have
to admit the 720 is at least as accurate as my previous two
trackballs, the Kensington
Turboball and the Microsoft
Trackball Explorer. Unlike the Explorer, the 720 had no
tendency to slide. I was unable to find out more about the
"clutch function". With most mice, when there is
not enough space left on the surface, the user would lift
the mouse up to centre it. GWS claimed to have a way around
this, the "clutch function", which could be
assigned to any button through the configuration software.
On a basic level, when a button is assigned as a clutch, all
movements on the X and Y axis are suppressed until the
button is released. A button does not have to be exclusively
assigned to clutch (i.e. the primary button can also be
the clutch). More on this later.
Navigating
the desktop was a bit harder than it should be, although it
got better over time. The adjustment was probably due to the
fact I was so used to using trackballs. The 720 performed
accurately for all intents and purposes on my 1600x1200
desktop.
I
first tried the 720 with Unreal Tournament, and was
pleasantly surprised by how accurate it was. Movement was
fluid and accurate, and 180 turns were easy. I didn't
actually find the need to use the "clutch"
function as I never really needed to move the 720 around to
much physically.
The
second game I tried was Quake III, patched to version 1.29h.
Whilst mouse buttons were recognized, Quake III totally
ignored all movements to the X and Y axis, and it doesn't
take a hardcore gamer to realize, this is pretty bad for
gameplay. I looked this up on the Rotokiller website and
this was listed as a known bug. The following has to be
entered into the Quake III console before mouse movement is recognized:
in_mouse
-1
in_restart
This
is presumably more of an issue with id's beta patch rather
than the 720. Once the mouse was working, gameplay seemed
fairly easy, sharp movements were easy and I found gameplay
on nightmare skill mode entirely practical. I did have to
turn the mouse sensitivity right down to practically nothing
though, as I found initially aiming was just not accurate
enough.
Half
Life, and more specifically Counter-Strike, was more
playable with the 720 than my previous trackball, the more
accurate movements being ideally suited for Counter-Strike
(rather than the gun-ho approach Unreal Tournament and Quake
III encourage.
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