To the Guitar Hero Skeptics

Many times I have told people that I'm going to get Guitar Hero, or it's awesome, or whatever. Often I get the response, "Why not just buy a real guitar?" This blog post is the result of the frustration I experience trying to answer that question.

According to Harmonix, the developer of the game, here's why:

"[Our] original goal was to allow non-musicians to experience the joy of playing music. ... Collectively, we believe that making music is one of the most exciting and satisfying experiences possible, but one that is denied to most people, given the time and commitment necessary to achieve proficiency on a musical instrument."

- From game developer magazine, Feb 2006, p. 24

In a few hours with Guitar Hero, you can sound like Jimi Hendrix. In a few hours with a real guitar, you can plink out about 5 different notes. Yes, there's no real substitute for learning to play a real instrument well. But if you want to casually enjoy the thrill of performing great music, then Guitar Hero is the thing.

OS X, Logitech, and Mouse Acceleration

I hate mouse acceleration. It's a nice idea, but I consider it to make the pointer's behavior inconsistent. I expect the pointer to move the distance I move the mouse, regardless of the speed.

So, I turn it off on every computer I use. This was difficult in Windows XP, because it's call "Enhance Pointer Precision." Yeah, right. I played Quake 3 for 4 months with the acceleration on, and wondered why I couldn't learn to aim. I thought it was because I came from an Unreal Tournament background. But what really happened, is I changed computer when I changed from UT to Quake. The company I worked at, Gamesworks LTD was a UT joint, and ATD, the new place was a Quake joint. I didn't have acceleration for UT, but I did for Quake. Needless to say, learning to fire the railgun with acceleration on is a bitch, especially when you don't know it's on!!

Anyway, my railgun accuracy went up from 25% to 40% within about 2 weeks of turning it off.

So, my wife gets me the new Logitech MX 1000 Laser Wireless mouse for Christmas. Very nice mouse, great present. I feel a little teeny bit of lag from it being wireless, but it's only about 2-3 frames at 125 FPS on Quake 3. Still, it feels a little strange to me. :)

Finally, my old 400 MHz G4 Mac that got stolen was replaced recently with a shiny (and I do mean shiny) new Dual 2.0 GHz G5. Very nice machine. Since this post is about the mouse, I won't tell you how nice an experience unpacking a new Mac is. :)

Anyway, as I already knew, you can't turn off mouse acceleration in OS X. APPLE WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?!?!? Anyway, I try SteerMouse. which works rather well, except that the speed settings near the low end (the upper end is too fast with acceleration off) are too far apart; and it causes problems with the MX1000! I wish Logitech's driver would allow me to turn off the accelertion.
>:(

So, I happen upon iMouseFix. This does the job very nicely. I can turn off mouse acceleration, and still use the Logitech drivers for the MX1000, AND it's free! :D

Now I'm happy again. Yeah, I like Macs, but I don't hesitate to mention the things that do truly suck about them.

And just as I finish writing this post, the mouse messes up again. It worked fine on my Windows 2000 machine... Grrr...
>:(