Having only used a ball mouse briefly for a couple of years and grown up mostly on the intellimouse explorer and optical mouse 1.1 optical (still have the latter), I went back to a ball mouse recently for my Dos/98 computer (Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1A) and while I can feel a reduction in mousing accuracy it's not as bad as you'd think. I have my PS/2 polling rate at 80hz because 200 uses too much CPU. Immediately on recieving the mouse it got stuck constantly and required thorough cleaning.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-01-08, 22:10:

Having only used a ball mouse briefly for a couple of years and grown up mostly on the intellimouse explorer and optical mouse 1.1 optical (still have the latter), I went back to a ball mouse recently for my Dos/98 computer (Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1A) and while I can feel a reduction in mousing accuracy it's not as bad as you'd think. I have my PS/2 polling rate at 80hz because 200 uses too much CPU. Immediately on recieving the mouse it got stuck constantly and required thorough cleaning.

Regular cleaning is the achilles heal of a ball mouse - for me it would begin to stutter mid game and demand time-out for cleaning. I think mitigations might be possible because I suspect most of the muck that congeals on the rollers originates from oily skin rubbing on the mouse matt, but I'll leave that yucky detail for another day.

Right now my mind is focussing on other bodily truths. And, given your learned IntelliMouse Explorer interactions, I'd be keen to know if you can identify a bodily extension.

I'll try to explain bodily extensions using tennis. These days I just watch tennis, but there may have been a point in time where I had played tennis for most of my life - and handling the tennis racquet is what I'm talking about.

The tennis racquet in my hands moved like an extension of my body with a nuance: it wasn't a longer limb, it was like a whole extra limb with its own dynamic abilities. This is because, thanks to gravity and inertia, the racquet slid in my palms and could even be juggled on finger tips using pure muscle memory.

That is the same with a ball mouse that has inertia, and it underscores another subtle nuance. Our hands move in 3D space, so tools that move in 3D space can be fully embodied as "extra limbs". The ball mouse only fully embodies when we include interaction during 3D motion in our muscle memory, like recentering with spinning ball inertial decay. If our mouse remains on the 2D plane only then it's prevented from being wholly embodied because the brain anticipates regular intermittent detachment from true 3D body motions.

Thus it made sense that for 2D users the switch to optical felt like an upgrade, whereas for people who played Quake for far too long the switch to optical felt like a sensory amputation - as horrifying as it would be for a teen in 2026 losing their iPhone!

The tennis racquet, the spinning ball in a mouse, and the always-signalling iPhone share one characteristic: they continue to be anticipated by our bodies during their detachment from our bodies.

I'll add this to my essays, but right now I have too many recollections flowing and need a rest 😁

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-08, 22:39:

I'll try to explain bodily extensions using tennis. These days I just watch tennis, but there may have been a point in time where I had played tennis for most of my life - and handling the tennis racquet is what I'm talking about.

Back in the 2000s when I racked up thousands of hours in urban terror and cs:source in public and skirmishes yes but not anymore. I'm a decade too young to have done that from 1996 to 2002 when ball mice were in common usage in freelook FPS games.

I used a ball mouse a lot over the years, and can honestly say that I'm glad they have been superseded. They needed to be cleaned every so often, and on some surfaces the ball would just slide instead of turning.

The only time I use one now is for the rare case where I need a RS232 serial mouse for some ancient computer.

Robbbert wrote on 2026-01-09, 00:30:

I used a ball mouse a lot over the years, and can honestly say that I'm glad they have been superseded. They needed to be cleaned every so often, and on some surfaces the ball would just slide instead of turning.

The only time I use one now is for the rare case where I need a RS232 serial mouse for some ancient computer.

Cleaning: I agree.
Surfaces: I can use a ball mouse on my knee, if needs must. For me, an optical mouse is far less forgiving to being used on "wrong" surfaces.

Zero-surface test: Hold any mouse in one hand. Move your index finger under the mouse to control the mouse pointer. Neither will be great, but which mouse is most usable?
EDIT: I might need to revisit the mouse mat but unfortunately I don't think I have any originals. EDIT2: Now I remember, the size of the mouse mat directly impacts when the ball leaves the surface - and the flick can be a reaction to running out of mat space. Hmm.. more thinking to do 😉

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-01-08, 23:37:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-08, 22:39:

I'll try to explain bodily extensions using tennis. These days I just watch tennis, but there may have been a point in time where I had played tennis for most of my life - and handling the tennis racquet is what I'm talking about.

Back in the 2000s when I racked up thousands of hours in urban terror and cs:source in public and skirmishes yes but not anymore. I'm a decade too young to have done that from 1996 to 2002 when ball mice were in common usage in freelook FPS games.

The games you mostly played (mid-2000s) were designed around optical-mouse assumptions. The games I mostly played (late-1990s) were designed around ball-mouse assumptions.

There was an overlap. Strike Force TC was built on Unreal Tournament '99 engine (carries 1998 ball-mouse assumptions), and Strike Force TC had maps/weapons/controls tuned when optical-mouse had emerged. There were side-effects: Under certain conditions original UT engine assumptions could surface through the TC map design assumptions.

I'd really like to know more about how an optical mouse expert user (with pre-emptive muscle memory) approached gaming differently to an optical mouse normal user (without pre-emptive muscle memory). That data would help complete my analysis.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-09, 11:22:

The games you mostly played (mid-2000s) were designed around optical-mouse assumptions.

Urban Terror was a mod for Quake 3 engine which you would assume was designed for ball mice

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-09, 11:22:

I'd really like to know more about how an optical mouse expert user (with pre-emptive muscle memory) approached gaming differently to an optical mouse normal user (without pre-emptive muscle memory). That data would help complete my analysis.

Near the start of optical mice it was a battle with maximum tracking speed and so most people had to conform their play style to fit within the technology of the time. That meant confining your mouse arc to a smaller area and increasing the sensitivity. If you hit the tracking limit the mouse control would start skipping backwards on the screen if you tried to do a 180 snap. As optical technology improved, play styles started to diversify - Tracking speed and DPI increases allowed players to significantly reduce mouse sensitivity and to use larger and larger mouse pads. Once the optical sensor was basically able to keep up with anything people threw at it around 2007-2008 the focus shifted to mouse pad surfaces (in hindsight the razer control surface was terrible), mice feet material and experimenting with grip styles.

Mouse pad. I've always used a clean mouse pad throughout the 90s.
It was a Commodore mouse mat and the serial mouse was a Genius Easy Mouse, I think.
I've checked the ball and the little wheels every few weeks, to see if they were still clean or not.
My father had a Microsoft Mouse, ps/2+serial, and a blue cloth mouse mat.

I just want to say, thank you for sharing these valuable insights - please keep them coming!

Every detail makes the record a richer tapestry of knowledge 😀

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-01-09, 11:46:

Near the start of optical mice it was a battle with maximum tracking speed and so most people had to conform their play style to fit within the technology of the time.

Emphasis in bold.

So when skills developed against old assumptions are discarded as irrelevant, learning again from scratch could feel like a waste of time. And, in the end, maybe I owe everything I am to the optical mouse? 😉