Call of Duty: Black Ops III Mouse Smoothing & Acceleration Fix

FPS games are shrouded in arcane mythology pertaining to the accuracy of mouse input, with never-ending debates over acceleration, smoothing, mouse input filtering, and raw input detection. Call of Duty: Black Ops III doesn't escape from this.

One of the first questions we encountered upon publication of our Black Ops III benchmark related to mouse smoothing and acceleration. Namely, “how do I get rid of it?” 

Black Ops III isn't that bad stock, but it can be an under-performer and the mouse can certainly lag behind with the wrong settings. To fix mouse smoothing and acceleration, we suggest these basics: 

The “Controls” options page has what you need, probably. Disable “Frame Smoothing,” set Mouse Acceleration to 0, and set mouse filtering to 0. This gets us raw mouse input without game modification.

If that hasn't resolved the issue, the next likelihood is a tie-in to FPS. You'll want to keep your FPS at or above 60 at all times. In Black Ops III, we've noticed mouse movement speed ties more heavily to framerate than in some other titles. Even running at 50FPS, we see “laggy” mouse input that impacts predictable game movements. The next step, then, is to lower settings and try to hit that sometimes-elusive 60+ FPS.

If you've still got problems, we'd then suggest checking the V-Sync (“Synchronize Frames”) and Max FPS settings in the graphics options. Disabling V-Sync is recommended. Capping FPS can sometimes be helpful to mouse input on some configurations – you'll just have to play with that to see if it works for yours.

- Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke.