When competitive players migrate from Valorant to Counter-Strike 2 or Apex Legends, the most common mistake is assuming that an in-game sensitivity slider value of 0.35 represents a universal unit of measurement. It does not. An in-game sensitivity value is merely an arbitrary multiplier applied to your mouse's hardware count stream before passing it through an engine-specific camera yaw constant.
1. The Raw Input Pipeline: From Sensor to Screen
Every modern optical gaming mouse communicates with your operating system by sending rapid coordinate updates (often 1000Hz, 4000Hz, or 8000Hz polling rate). Each unit of physical movement detected by the sensor is registered as a single discrete count (commonly referred to as a 'dot' in DPI).
When raw mouse input is enabled in a modern FPS engine, the game bypasses Windows Pointer Ballistics (Enhanced Pointer Precision) and captures raw count deltas:
2. Hardcoded Engine Yaw Constants
Different game engines scale camera rotation using vastly different internal yaw values. Valve's Source and Source 2 engines have historically used 0.022° per count, whereas Riot Games configured Valorant's Unreal Engine 4 implementation to use 0.070° per count.
| Game Engine | Flagship Titles | Camera Yaw (Degrees/Count) | Ratio to Source (CS2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source 2 / GoldSrc | CS2, CS:GO, Team Fortress 2 | 0.022000° | 1.000x |
| Unreal Engine 4 (Riot) | Valorant | 0.070000° | 3.1818x |
| Respawn Source Fork | Apex Legends, Titanfall 2 | 0.022000° | 1.000x |
| Tank Engine | Overwatch 2 | 0.006600° | 0.300x |
| IW Engine (Modern) | Call of Duty: Warzone, MW3 | 0.006600° | 0.300x |
| AnvilNext 2.0 | Rainbow Six Siege | 0.005729578° | 0.2604x |
3. The Conversion Formula
To preserve exact 1:1 camera rotation between two games without altering your mouse's hardware DPI, the target in-game sensitivity must be scaled by the ratio of the two engine yaw constants:
Example: Converting 0.35 Valorant Sens (@ 800 DPI) to CS2 (@ 800 DPI):
CS2 Sens = 0.35 × (0.070 / 0.022) × (800 / 800) = 0.35 × 3.181818 = 1.1136
4. The Physical Metric: cm/360° Physical Distance
While sensitivity numbers and eDPI fluctuate wildly between titles, physical distance is immutable. cm/360° measures the precise distance in centimeters your mouse must travel across your mousepad to execute a complete 360-degree rotation of the in-game camera.
cm/360° = (360 × 2.54) / (Sensitivity × Yaw Constant × DPI)For instance, a Valorant player using 0.35 @ 800 DPI requires exactly 46.65 cm to turn 360 degrees. Applying 1.1136 in CS2 yields the exact same 46.65 cm/360°, locking muscle memory and arm motor unit recruitment into permanent parity.