Mouse acceleration testing
Logitech had a similar turntable machine, which I forgot to grab a photo of, built to test mouse acceleration. The mouse would be quickly swiped in one direction, then slowly returned to its starting position. The machine was hooked up to a system running Counter-Strike; it would fire off a shot, then show that after the fast swipe and slow return, the cursor lined up on the exact same spot.
Acceleration is one of the big no-nos of gaming mice; when a sensor exhibits acceleration, that means that the cursor will move a different distance based on the speed you move the mouse. Swipe fast and the cursor moves further (or not as far) as a slow swipe. That inconsistency can make it hard to judge exactly where your pointer will be. Logitech proudly proclaims the new G502 exhibits absolutely no acceleration.
Chris Pate, referring to the test machine: "This specific mouse was collected from a user who was experiencing what he felt to be inaccuracy or acceleration. So I contacted him, got the mouse back, got him a different one, shipped it off to François to validate. Because it’s not that we’re trying to prove that anybody’s wrong. We want to make sure that everything we do meets the standards that we’ve set. So in the event that there was something wrong with the mouse, we collected it to make sure, and we validated that it actually does perform as we’ve specified. We narrowed it down to one of two things. Either the USB port that he was using, or the fact that he was removing the weight door to reduce the weight because he wanted a lighter mouse, and if you remove the weight door it removes one of the feet, and you can actually pick the sensor up a little bit when you’re swiping it.