cm/360: the universal sensitivity unit
Ask two players what sensitivity they use and you will get two numbers that cannot be compared. Ask how many centimetres they move to turn all the way around and you get a fact about the physical world, identical in meaning across every game, mouse and year.
The definition
cm/360 is the distance your mouse physically travels across the pad while your character rotates through one complete circle. That is the whole idea. It is a distance, measured in centimetres, and it describes something you can put a ruler against.
Where yaw is the engine's fixed degrees-of-rotation-per-count constant, sensitivity is your in-game slider value, and DPI is your mouse's counts per inch. The 2.54 converts inches to centimetres. Nothing in that formula is proprietary or approximate.
Why it wins
Every other way of quoting a sensitivity is a number that only means something in context you have to supply separately.
| Metric | Survives a DPI change? | Survives a game change? | Comparable between players? |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-game sensitivity | No | No | Only if DPI and game match |
| eDPI | Yes | No | Only within one game |
| cm/360 | Yes | Yes | Always |
There is a second, deeper reason. cm/360 is the unit your body actually trains in. Your motor system has no representation of a slider value or an eDPI; it has a mapping from muscle activation to distance travelled. When you build aim, the thing you are building is a distance-to-angle association. Quoting the sensitivity in the unit the skill is stored in is not a stylistic preference, it is a description of what is happening.
Measure yours by hand
Do this once. It takes a minute and it will catch problems no calculator can see.
- Put a strip of masking tape along the front edge of your mousepad.
- Place the mouse near the left edge and mark the tape at the left edge of the mouse body.
- In game, stand still and look directly at something distinctive: a corner, a poster, a specific edge.
- Drag the mouse right in a single smooth motion until you have turned exactly once and are looking at the same thing.
- Mark the tape again at the left edge of the mouse. Measure between marks.
- Repeat three times. Take the middle value.
If the measurement disagrees with the calculator
By more than about 5%, something is modifying your input. In descending order of likelihood: Windows pointer speed is not at 6/11, enhance pointer precision is on, your mouse driver has a sensitivity multiplier above or below 1, the game has acceleration or smoothing enabled, or your DPI is not what the software claims. Work through them in that order. The pointer speed page covers the first two.
What the ranges mean
These bands describe how the movement is physically produced, which is the only non-arbitrary way to draw the lines.
| Band | Range | How the turn is produced | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very high | under 22 cm | Wrist and fingers only. A full turn is a single wrist rotation. | Extremely fast to reorient. Micro-corrections are near the resolution limit of your hand. |
| High | 22 to 32 cm | Wrist-led with occasional forearm. | Common in hero shooters and movement shooters where you turn constantly. |
| Medium | 32 to 45 cm | Wrist for corrections, forearm for large movements. | The widest band among tactical shooter professionals. Good compromise. |
| Low | 45 to 60 cm | Forearm-led, elbow anchored. | Very stable. Needs a large pad and real desk depth. |
| Very low | over 60 cm | Full arm from the shoulder. | Maximum precision on small targets, slow to respond to a flank. |
Note what these bands are not: a ranking. Nothing about the medium band makes it better, and the fact that it is crowded is largely a consequence of desk sizes and the games people play, not of an underlying optimum.
The full ladder
| cm/360 | Aiming style | CS2 / Apex / Source sens @800 | Valorant sens @800 | Overwatch 2 / CoD sens @800 | eDPI (Source family) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 cm | Very high (wrist) | 3.464 | 1.089 | 11.55 | 2771 |
| 20 cm | Very high (wrist) | 2.598 | 0.816 | 8.66 | 2078 |
| 25 cm | High (wrist and fingers) | 2.078 | 0.653 | 6.93 | 1663 |
| 30 cm | High (wrist and fingers) | 1.732 | 0.544 | 5.77 | 1385 |
| 35 cm | Medium (wrist plus forearm) | 1.484 | 0.467 | 4.95 | 1188 |
| 40 cm | Medium (wrist plus forearm) | 1.299 | 0.408 | 4.33 | 1039 |
| 45 cm | Medium (wrist plus forearm) | 1.155 | 0.363 | 3.85 | 924 |
| 50 cm | Low (forearm) | 1.039 | 0.327 | 3.46 | 831 |
| 60 cm | Low (forearm) | 0.866 | 0.272 | 2.89 | 693 |
| 70 cm | Very low (full arm) | 0.742 | 0.233 | 2.47 | 594 |
| 80 cm | Very low (full arm) | 0.649 | 0.204 | 2.16 | 520 |
Two ways cm/360 is misused
Treating it as a target rather than a description
People read that professionals cluster around 35 cm and move there overnight. That trades a year of trained association for a number on a chart. If your current value works and sits inside a band you can physically execute on your desk, the correct action is to leave it alone.
Forgetting it says nothing about vertical
cm/360 is a horizontal measurement. Most games use a fixed pitch-to-yaw ratio so vertical follows automatically, but a few expose them separately, and if yours does then matching the horizontal alone leaves you with an aim that behaves differently on the two axes. Check whether your game has a separate vertical sensitivity, and if it does, leave it at the ratio the game ships with unless you have a specific reason.
Related reading
- Calculate your cm/360 in either direction.
- eDPI explained, including where it is genuinely the right metric.
- How to choose a sensitivity and then stop.
- Whether your pad can execute the value you want.
Frequently asked questions
How do I measure my cm/360 without a calculator?
Put a mark on your mousepad at the left edge of your mouse. Look at a distinctive fixed object in game. Drag the mouse to the right in one motion until you are looking at that object again, having turned exactly once. Mark the new position and measure between the marks. Do it three times and take the middle value. This is the ground truth, and if it disagrees with a calculator then something is scaling your input.
Is a lower cm/360 better?
No. Lower means a larger arm movement per degree, which improves precision on small corrections and costs you turn speed and desk space. Higher means the reverse. Which trade is correct depends on the game, your desk, and how you physically aim. There is no evidence for a universally optimal value, and the range used by successful professionals in a single title routinely spans a factor of two.
Should cm/360 be the same in every game I play?
As a default, yes. Keeping it constant means one physical skill serves every title, and switching games costs you nothing on day one. Deviate deliberately when a game's pace genuinely demands it, for example running faster in a game where you turn 180 degrees constantly, and treat that as a considered exception rather than drift.
Why do people still quote eDPI then?
Because within a single game it is easy to calculate and easy to compare, and most communities are single-game communities. It only breaks when it crosses a title boundary, which is exactly when people quote it at each other on the internet.
Does cm/360 account for field of view?
No, and this is its one real limitation. It describes rotation, not on-screen movement. Two players with identical cm/360 but different fields of view will find that tracking feels different, because the same rotation covers a different fraction of the screen. That is a separate problem, handled by monitor distance matching.