Mouse problem on Windows 7 (VMw Fusion Macbook Pro OSX 10.8.2)... with solution!

[664a69796dc1aMockAE]

Hi everyone. Long time lover of System Shock 2, first time posting here.

Just wanted to share this to save anyone else the same headache.

Recently got Windows 7 installed on VMware Fusion with host system OSX 10.8.2. on an Intel MacBook Pro
Obviously one of my first instincts was to get SS2 sorted out, along with a few other favourite games (Thief 1/2,
Planescape Torment etc.)

At first SS2 installed fine but crashed to desktop immediately. Had same problem with other 3D games and realised
I hadn't installed VMware Tools, which sorts out 3D acceleration - Doh.

SS2 then ran and looked lovely. Only issue was the in-game mouse controls were very very weird and didn't work properly,
making the game unplayable. Essentially the problem was that moving the mouse either pushed the view all the way up
or all the way down. Looking left and right did not work. Another odd feature was that once you started looking (e.g.) up any
further movement of the mouse continued in the same direction until reaching the maximum. Then you could only look in the
other direction.

Strangely enough the main menu worked perfectly.

The problem was apparently that VMWare's "Optimize mouse for games"
setting needed to be switched to always on. This probably isn't specific to this game
but it's the first I've played which needed it.

I had quite a good look and couldn't find this problem listed anywhere
 so I thought I'd post it in case someone else has the same issue.
I don't know how specific this is to my particular (somewhat idiosyncratic)
 setup or whether this is a known issue with other games but
either way, might as well mention it for the record. Hope it helps someone!

BTW I had installed the newdark 2.4 patch and prior to finding this fix, have
SS2 mod manager installed but not using any actual mods,
no idea if this would work in the absence of these patches
but it's not broken now so I'm not going to "fix" it

***EDIT -- the above previously referred to switching off "optimize pointer precision"
in Win7. This turned out not to be the solution after all. Somehow the setting above
changed despite my not intentionally doing so. I've actually tested both proposed
solutions now and this definitely works.