ZeosPantera
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2009
- Messages
- 476
Field of View. Is it a personal preference? in most games you are forced to use only the fov the developers chose. In FPS games having a higher fov can mean the difference of not only a match but your entire career as a gamer. But high FOV is not without it's drawbacks.
I want this thread to educate, enrage and encourage people to fiddle with their field of view (if you can) to see and feel the benefits of the entire scale going from 100° horizontal to 30°!
Normal in-game FOV. Source games like CSS, TF2 have a slider to set from 75° Horizontal to 90°. (Presumably this was to accommodate players with new fancy-pants wide-screen monitors) And old school games like doom and Unreal Tournament touting 100+ FOV. That sort of FOV has been the norm for years. But with modern screens getting larger and larger, and the FOV's staying the same, I see a problem. I will rephrase. There is another option.
Stop thinking about games as "games" and try thinking about them as simulators. Every "game" you play under the right circumstances can act as a simulator, no matter the genre. How is that possible? It is all in the proper Field of View. It may help to think about it like so. A window into the virtual world.
You have a magic calculate-able and real value that corresponds to your unique hardware setup. I guarantee no-one reading this post has played anything in their Proper fov. The way you determine your personal, proper fov is very simple. It involves taking two measurements. The width (or height) of your monitor's viewable area and the distance you are sitting from it. With that you can use a triangle calculator http://ostermiller.org/calc/triangle.html OR http://www.pagetutor.com/trigcalc/trig.html (use half values) and get the angle your eyes see the monitor.
I sit 34" away from my monitor. It is 12" high and 19" wide. I calculate to a Horizontal FOV of 32 and a vertical of 20 (16:10 Monitor). If I was able to move the monitor closer and still be comfortable I could raise those values but still would not come anywhere close to what can be considered "normal" in most games. In order to sit 32" away and achieve a calculated H-FOV of 90° the screen would need to be 63" WIDE!!! Now Triplehead and eyefinity can certainly supply a gamer with a gaming surface 63 inches wide (3x24"). BUT ... you would still be playing the game with the TOTAL horizontal FOV at 90°. Meaning instead of gaining all that screen real-estate with two extra monitors you would actually just lose a LARGE amount of up and down and retain the same width you used on your single monitor just placed across three. Which would look like this.
So what does an H-Fov of 32 look like in action? Killing floor can be freighting but when it appears as though you are fighting creatures on the other side of your monitors bezel, it is terrifying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XE234ejXns&hd=1
NOW STOP>.. YES it is narrow, YES I can't see beside myself and YES in a real match I would be no help and probably murdered from a clot just outside my view. That is not the issue. Scale, Distance and Reality are. With a larger monitor or the ability to move it closer I would be able to up the FOV to possibly 40 Horizontal and still achieve that perfect scale.
Imagine bringing up iron-sights in a game and nothing zooms in. Because you are already at the exactly correct amount of detail you would have in real life.
Here are some more videos a friend and I have recorded in our proper FOV's..
Amnesia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOaq-R5tyJ0&hd=1
Gmod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SecYuFVVrY4&hd=1
ArmA2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3I4UmT5Qfc&hd=1
rFactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIx5Zoi5oo&hd=1
rFactor 1080P comparison Video (62 Vfov vs 20Vfov)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWV0_u0r-Hk&hd=1
NOTE:: Will check thread for coherence when not 5:46 am. Please be patient.
I want this thread to educate, enrage and encourage people to fiddle with their field of view (if you can) to see and feel the benefits of the entire scale going from 100° horizontal to 30°!
Normal in-game FOV. Source games like CSS, TF2 have a slider to set from 75° Horizontal to 90°. (Presumably this was to accommodate players with new fancy-pants wide-screen monitors) And old school games like doom and Unreal Tournament touting 100+ FOV. That sort of FOV has been the norm for years. But with modern screens getting larger and larger, and the FOV's staying the same, I see a problem. I will rephrase. There is another option.
Stop thinking about games as "games" and try thinking about them as simulators. Every "game" you play under the right circumstances can act as a simulator, no matter the genre. How is that possible? It is all in the proper Field of View. It may help to think about it like so. A window into the virtual world.
You have a magic calculate-able and real value that corresponds to your unique hardware setup. I guarantee no-one reading this post has played anything in their Proper fov. The way you determine your personal, proper fov is very simple. It involves taking two measurements. The width (or height) of your monitor's viewable area and the distance you are sitting from it. With that you can use a triangle calculator http://ostermiller.org/calc/triangle.html OR http://www.pagetutor.com/trigcalc/trig.html (use half values) and get the angle your eyes see the monitor.
I sit 34" away from my monitor. It is 12" high and 19" wide. I calculate to a Horizontal FOV of 32 and a vertical of 20 (16:10 Monitor). If I was able to move the monitor closer and still be comfortable I could raise those values but still would not come anywhere close to what can be considered "normal" in most games. In order to sit 32" away and achieve a calculated H-FOV of 90° the screen would need to be 63" WIDE!!! Now Triplehead and eyefinity can certainly supply a gamer with a gaming surface 63 inches wide (3x24"). BUT ... you would still be playing the game with the TOTAL horizontal FOV at 90°. Meaning instead of gaining all that screen real-estate with two extra monitors you would actually just lose a LARGE amount of up and down and retain the same width you used on your single monitor just placed across three. Which would look like this.
So what does an H-Fov of 32 look like in action? Killing floor can be freighting but when it appears as though you are fighting creatures on the other side of your monitors bezel, it is terrifying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XE234ejXns&hd=1
NOW STOP>.. YES it is narrow, YES I can't see beside myself and YES in a real match I would be no help and probably murdered from a clot just outside my view. That is not the issue. Scale, Distance and Reality are. With a larger monitor or the ability to move it closer I would be able to up the FOV to possibly 40 Horizontal and still achieve that perfect scale.
Imagine bringing up iron-sights in a game and nothing zooms in. Because you are already at the exactly correct amount of detail you would have in real life.
Here are some more videos a friend and I have recorded in our proper FOV's..
Amnesia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOaq-R5tyJ0&hd=1
Gmod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SecYuFVVrY4&hd=1
ArmA2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3I4UmT5Qfc&hd=1
rFactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIx5Zoi5oo&hd=1
rFactor 1080P comparison Video (62 Vfov vs 20Vfov)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWV0_u0r-Hk&hd=1
NOTE:: Will check thread for coherence when not 5:46 am. Please be patient.
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