What Is cm/360°? The FPS Sensitivity Standard Explained
If you have ever copied your sensitivity into a new game and felt like you were playing with someone else's setup, you already understand the problem. cm/360° is the measurement that solves it — permanently.
The Problem With Raw Sensitivity Numbers
In-game sensitivity settings are not a standardised unit of speed. They are multipliers that each game applies to raw mouse input before calculating how many degrees to rotate your view. The game engine scales that multiplier by its own internal constant — called engineYaw — and the resulting rotation speed is what you actually experience.
Valorant's engineYaw is 0.07. CS2's is 0.022. Fortnite's is 0.5709. These are hardcoded into each engine and have no relationship to one another.
The consequence: a sensitivity of 1.0 in Valorant rotates your view approximately 3.18 times faster than a sensitivity of 1.0 in CS2 at identical DPI. The numbers look the same. The experience is unrecognisable.
What cm/360° Actually Measures
cm/360° answers a single physical question: how many centimetres does your mouse travel on your mousepad to complete a full 360° rotation in-game?
It is entirely independent of which game you are playing, what number the sensitivity slider shows, or what that slider is called. It depends on only three things:
- Your DPI — the hardware sensitivity of your mouse (dots per inch)
- Your in-game sensitivity value
- The game's engineYaw constant
The formula:
The × 2.54 converts inches to centimetres. The rest of the formula calculates how many inches of mouse travel are required: 360 degrees of rotation divided by the degrees produced per inch of movement.
Working Through the Math
A Valorant player uses 800 DPI and a sensitivity of 0.4:
Their mouse travels 40.8 cm to complete a full rotation. Now they want the same physical feel in CS2. The question becomes: what CS2 sensitivity produces 40.8 cm/360° at 800 DPI?
CS2 sensitivity 1.273 at 800 DPI. The number changed by a factor of 3.18. The physical distance the mouse travels for a 360° — 40.8 cm — is identical.
What Range of cm/360° Is Normal?
There is no universally correct cm/360°. Playstyle, genre, and personal preference all play a role. That said, the competitive FPS community has produced consistent clustering data across thousands of professional player setups:
| cm/360° Range | Physical Speed | Common in |
|---|---|---|
| 10 – 20 cm | Very fast | Fortnite build fights, aggressive close-range |
| 20 – 35 cm | Fast | Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, CoD |
| 35 – 50 cm | Moderate | Most popular range — Valorant, CS2 riflers |
| 50 – 80 cm | Slow | Precision play, CS2 AWP specialists |
| 80+ cm | Very slow | Rare; some elite AWP/sniper players |
Most professional FPS players cluster in the 30–50 cm range when measured across Valorant, CS2, Apex Legends, and similar titles. This is not a rule — it is an observation that reflects what tends to work for fast-paced competitive play where both precision and reactivity matter.
DPI and Sensitivity Are Interchangeable
400 DPI at sensitivity 2.0 and 800 DPI at sensitivity 1.0 are mathematically identical in cm/360°. Both produce the same physical rotation speed. There is no mechanical advantage to a specific DPI.
The practical reason most competitive players use 800 DPI or higher is cursor smoothness: at very low DPI, mouse movement is quantised into perceptibly large steps, producing slightly jagged crosshair movement at low sensitivity. Above 800 DPI, this effect is negligible for standard gaming mice. There is no meaningful benefit above 1600 DPI for raw input purposes.
How to Use This Across Games
Calculate your current cm/360° using the formula above, or use the reference table on any converter page on this site — it shows your cm/360° for five typical sensitivity values at three common DPI settings.
Once you have your number, it travels with you permanently. Switching to any new game becomes a single calculation, not a re-training process. Your muscle memory — built over hundreds of hours — stays intact.