Tip: Improved mouse control

[XenoBrain]

For a long time now I've been playing the game with my Xbox 360 (now Xbox One) controller because the mouse controls just felt...bad. Jerky. Laggy. Inconsistent.

I'm a long time PC Gamer too with a nice setup (Razer DeathAdder Mouse, Razer BlackWidow Keyboard if you're curious) but the controls were consistently unsatisfying. I missed a lot of shots too, wasting a lot more of those semi-precious bullets than I did playing with my controller.

Then I even enabled auto-aim for the mouse to compensate! Something's seriously wrong when you need to use auto-aim with a mouse to be competitive with a gamepad, and even then it was pretty much a wash!

One day I was visiting a friend and forgot to bring my controller for the LAN party, so it was time to see if I could get the mouse controls into shape.

So here's what I figured out:
Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\WillowInput.ini
is the place to start.

first:

[Engine.PlayerInput]
***
bEnableMouseSmoothing=true

should be changed to false to disable input interpolation.
This setting has has been mentioned by other guides as well as the configuration program, but it doesn't go far enough to feel like a proper PC FPS should, so let's continue, setting:

[Engine.PlayerInput]
***
LookRightScale=100
LookUpScale=-100
MouseSensitivity=100.0


to those values. This makes movement sensitivity the same along all axis, not faster along X and slower along Y which is the game's default. This helps increase movement predictability.

I do note that the overall sensitivity almost certainly won't be to your taste after this, so feel free to adjust it using the in-game slider, mouse response stays consistent even when you change this.


Great, so now the mouse behaves nicely again. Smooth and predictable like a PC native FPS. It's still laggy though (I mean that in the actual sense of input latency, not the common usage meaning of "low framerate"), so let's clear that up too!

Open up
Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\WillowEngine.ini
and change this setting from True to False as seen here:

[SystemSettings]
***
OneFrameThreadLag=False


And there you have it--smooth, consistent & responsive mouse control like a true PC FPS. Finally I can turn the auto-aim off.

Nice for Borderlands 2 as well.


Edit: Hopefully improved clarity, explanation and.... justification

[DNR3]

I've always had some kind of mouse accel in all unreal based games (BL included), aside of the bEnableMouseSmoothing=false thing I also used MarkC's mouse fix and that was enough to get rid of it for me.

Also, for those who want to play with vsync without mouse delay, be sure to cap your fps to 60 (or whatever your refresh rate is). I enabled vsync and capped the framerate in the config files since doing it with 3rd part apps (like afterburner or ccc) can cause frame drops.

[Tiny Trees]

Wow. I have no problem with it at all.

The only thing I would like to change is field of view. There is a fix for that but so far I haven't put effort into doing it. It looks a bit more complicated with BL, than usual.

[75338]

Thanks. Trying this out now, with the added LensFlares=True

[Kill_Switch94]

im still having problems. any suggestions?

[Terrenblade]

thank you OP

[Zerame]

This.
Thank you so much for this thread, OP. Literally playable now.

[OveR]

Thanks this worked for me! :)

[Chispon]

LookRightScale=100
LookUpScale=-100

I don't think these commands did affect my mouse movement at all, but it did affect my Controller for sure.

Also OneFrameThreadLag=False can cause a huge performance lost, it's not recommended to set it to False.

[XenoBrain]

In my testing they had an extreme effect on mouse sensitivity. Perhaps you are not changing the correct .ini file? In fact I think the recommendation of 100 then scaling down sensitivity from there may be too high. Maybe 50%? But the idea is to equalize sensitivity across axis.

And yes, disabling OneFrameThreadLag certainly causes a significant performance decrease. Borderlands has been hitting 60fps+ at max settings on midrange hardware for many years now, so the incurred performance loss unlikely to affect a vast majority of players. And the benefits to responsiveness for changing that setting are tangible.

But yes, if you experience a noticable performance loss, take note, it allows much less leeway in render times by the GPU.

[Ellye]

I know this thread is pretty old, but I've been replaying Borderlands 1 recently and the mouse movement has been weird as hell for me.

Thanks, those ini settings seem to help quite a bit.

[123]

Originally posted by Ellye:

I know this thread is pretty old, but I've been replaying Borderlands 1 recently and the mouse movement has been weird as hell for me.

Thanks, those ini settings seem to help quite a bit.

LOL me too, the mouse control doesnt feel right and kinda hard to aim what i want to aim. It's weird that a goty game has this kind of problem and not fixed even after a few years.

For me it's the sensitivity, I changed it to lowest in the game's slider and it's smooth now, but the mouse sensitivity is kinda too low. No way to increase the slider without affecting the feel of the mouse aim

[Naked Snake]

Works like a charm in borderlands 2