If you play on PC there is something called 'Eyefinity'. Some new graphics cards come with it, it basically does exactly what your saying.
Works with BF3, get 3 monitors and you can have the normal view on the middle and 'extra periferal view' on the other two
You might want to update your OP with that link so people know it's out there
also, in skyrim, you can open console with ~ and then type "fov X" where x is anything. default is 65 and 100 works pretty well for me.
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Whenever I play a first person game, I always feel like I can't see enough of my environment and need to look around a lot.
It turns out that the reason why I feel this way is because the normal person's eye visual field (aka field of view: the amount we can see) is 200 degrees. In other words, if you are facing forwards, you can see 100 degrees to your left out of your peripheral vision, and 100 degrees to your right with your peripheral vision. Also, you can see 70 degrees up and 70 degrees down with your peripheral vision.
On the other hand, in games like skyrim, quake, etc, the total field of view, based on personal testing (I just bought skyrim) seems to be more like 45 degrees. No wonder when I'm playing, I always feel like I'm blind and it's not as immersive. They make these great video games with tons of awesome visuals and scenery, but only give us 45 degrees of visual field. For reference, you need at least 60 degrees of visual field to be allowed to drive. Anything less than that is considered visually impaired. Feel awkward much running through a vibrant scenery with 45 degree visual field?
Anyways, I have some background in game programming, and the reason why games have this happening is because in programming, the screen display is based on a virtual eyeball, and a virtual window in front of that eyeball. Based on how big and how far the window is from the eye, the game calculates what pixels to draw onto your monitor.
Problem is, the natural human eye can see 200 degrees of vision. It can see more than 180 degrees, meaning that a flat window method of drawing would never be enough to see 200 degrees. Currently, in all the premade IDKs (direct x, open gl, etc) and engines that programmers use to make games, they all use a standard eye/window technique to draw to the screen. It is impossible with this technique to get a visual field more than say, 180, because for a visual field to exceed 180 and to approximate what is more realistic, the window would actually have to slightly CURVE around the eye.
EXAMPLE OF 45 DEGREE VISUAL FIELD
EXAMPLE OF 200 DEGREE VISUAL FIELD
Anyways, I guess I should put a poll here.
Poll: Would you prefer the normal 45 degree vision, or a more natural 200?
I would prefer more than 45, but less than 200. I don't want games to be just like real life. (198)
49%
Give me 200 field of vision! I want to experience games and be immersed in the environment like real (174)
43%
45 is fine. I can play battle field 3 and skyrim just fine as it is (29)
7%
401 total votes
Your vote: Would you prefer the normal 45 degree vision, or a more natural 200?
(Vote): 45 is fine. I can play battle field 3 and skyrim just fine as it is (Vote): I would prefer more than 45, but less than 200. I don't want games to be just like real life. (Vote): Give me 200 field of vision! I want to experience games and be immersed in the environment like real
The standard FOV on most console games these days is 60 for some reason I don't understand. I don't know why it got knocked down to 60 from the 90 standard that I know from quake, but hey.
On November 17 2011 08:29 jinorazi wrote: good games have a setting to change your fov, skyrim has it, quake has it, these two are the only ones i can name at the moment.
i changed mine on skyrim to 85, beyond that it looks like i've just pressed the NOS button.
best option would be for the developer to allow customization on fov.
How do you change it? I'm looking through my settings and I don't know where to do this.
180 degree vision would require a very (read arbitrarily) large display. I don't need full field of vision for immersion, but as it is now, I want to see more. It really feels like I am looking through eye slits in a helmet.
Wouldn't it only make sense to have a FOV of 200 degrees on your monitor if your monitor was taking up your entire FOV? Otherwise you've got 200 degrees of game vision taking up 60 degrees of your RL vision, and it looks like you're playing through a fish-eye lens.
I was thinking about this exact thing the other day after a marathon session in Skyrim.
Most games seem to show vision only as what we see in our binocular vision. People obviously have peripheral vision, which we can be used to see stuff if we try, but is more useful for detecting movement and other changes in environment which aren't detailed. Not having the peripheral vision is what really makes thing annoying, to me, in video games that use a first person perspective.
Of course, just making the normal vision in a first person view 200 degrees isn't right either. You can't fully see 200 degrees in front of you. Binocular vision really is about 45-60 degrees(check it out by your self by closing one eye and tracking how far you can see your finger before it disappears behind your nose) so someone smarter then me needs to figure out a better system.
intersting read had never taken the degree to which you can see into thought before!
hm i'm torn between 200 and slightly less to prevent super realism. video gamse allow you to be whoever you be/do whatever you want (within game reason of course) so shooting people in the head is something i'd like in a video game... but obviously not real life... so i dunno HOW realistic i'd want it to be
Console games have low FOV because their hardware is so old, they need to restrict the vision to such a small margin just to make the game run at 30 FPS.
So, to keep it relevant, I can't wait for the next gen consoles to come out so that our multi-plat FPS's can have 90-100 FoV instead of like 45. Anything over 100 is just getting ridiculous, anything under 80 is just stupid.
Deus Ex has fov change option and imho it's a very good game
I remember one game where when I changed to widescreen the cinematographic feeling turned on automatically, it was last years AvP. Nothing else felt as new as AvP did on widescreen even with it's decreased fov.
I remember Halo 2 on PC, I couldn't play that game not becuase I felt bad or anything like that, but because I couldn't actually see where I'm going, as if I had a cardboard box with a hole on my head. Always fell somewhere, it just felt super weird. No other game with decreased fov had such impact on me.
With small POVs everything is zoomed in and more engaging. Things move faster, it can be more frantic, it's a submodalities thing- it's designed to be more engaging.
At around 90 POV most competitive quakers are pretty comfortable, having found a medium between visibility and zoom for aiming. Rapha (world champ) uses 110 FOV, but I know guys who turned theirs down to 60. I used 60 to help aim with certain weapons, you use a hotkey to swap the fov settings.
Couldn't handle playing with 45 degrees though. Ridiculous.
You realize that the 180-200 FOV is your focus (of usually around 45-60) + peripheral vision? There've been plenty of studies on focus/peripheral vision, and while our brains can capture the full 180-200, they can not process it properly enough for us to know exactly what we see with our peripheral.
This is why your peripheral is "blurry", you can't make out distinct shapes well enough until you focus on them.
For games, where a lot is happening around you, this would mean expanding the screen width to triple (hello 48 screens..) and then keeping the left ~60 degrees and right ~60 degrees blurry (to prevent the user just moving the chair back a meter to have all three screens inside his focus.
bottomline, do research first before yelling random stuff. If you actually had some relevant experience in game programming, you should know this stuff.
(and yes I got a game-ish masters myself where I did relevant study to human perceived FOV for some pathplanning/flocking research)
problem is, while the human eye can see that wide field of vision, it also sees it in a parabolic appearance, think of the spread out imagse of the world, where its fat in the center and tapers off when you get close to the edges of left and right.
Additionally, Our visual system works the image int oa more or less flat appearance. The 200 field of vision you're showing us is "fishbowl" vision. I for one would not enjoy one second of playing a game like that.
Never noticed any difference. Doesn't bother me in the slightest . Besides, aren't our actual fields of vision much smaller and our brains calculate what is probably there to fill out our view? I can't believe people care about this o.O what a shock! DIdn't even know there was an option to change this in games.
EDIT: Karok said what I was trying to say much better!!! ^^^
To make a FPS real world you would either need a very large display were you would actually have to look around (moving your head) or have the farther out it goes to be blurred due to you can see something at the edge of your vision but its not like you can read it... so you could see movement but you would have to move your camera to be sure its a target that you want to engage. Just a thought.
I use 90 on my FPS games, nice balance between the amount you can see and the size of things on your screen. Remember that at higher FoVs things at the middle of your screen (things your aiming at) look smaller than lower FoVs because more needs to fit on the same size screen. Much above 90 FoV and aiming starts getting really difficult.
Are you guys talking about aspect ratios? Do you want to play games letterboxed to a 3.11 aspect ratio? That is the aspect ratio of the second picture in the OP. TV Widescreen is 1.78, most movie widescreen is approximately 2.39, Old CRTs are 1.33, etc. How do you propose getting this wilder field of vision lest you letterbox the crap out of your display? Or what am I missing here?
On November 17 2011 08:44 Natespank wrote: With small POVs everything is zoomed in and more engaging. Things move faster, it can be more frantic, it's a submodalities thing- it's designed to be more engaging.
At around 90 POV most competitive quakers are pretty comfortable, having found a medium between visibility and zoom for aiming. Rapha (world champ) uses 110 FOV, but I know guys who turned theirs down to 60. I used 60 to help aim with certain weapons, you use a hotkey to swap the fov settings.
Couldn't handle playing with 45 degrees though. Ridiculous.
You're wrong about that though. Things get faster at higher degrees on field of view, not lower.
Yeah the standard setting field of view on alot games is horrible.
Skyrim felt really bad. Entering a house and having to look around with your mouse instead with your eyes hurts my head.
And there isn't even an ingame option to change it. You have to find out about the console command and change it to your liking. I went with 85. That way you see alot more but things aren't too small in the middle of your screen. So for me around 80-90 is best.
Feel awkward much running through a vibrant scenery with 45 degree visual field?
No. Because your screen is not your eyes, nor is it intended to be. You screen is a window on the action.
You have a wide field of vision with your eyes, but that doesn't mean you see equally well with every part of your eyes. Most of your photorecepters are centered directly behind your lenses; the majority of your vision comes from what is in the center of your vision. Your peripheral vision is, while certainly there, quite poor overall; when you see something moving out there, you quickly move your useful vision that way (ie: move your eyes to look).
To represent that properly in a game, you would need to have a very large monitor (or a bank of smaller ones) such that it wraps around your actual human field of vision. Otherwise, what you'd be doing is squishing your screen down to a very small size. Just look at those pictures you posted; you can see very little detail in the wide shot, compared to the narrow one.
On November 17 2011 08:29 jinorazi wrote: good games have a setting to change your fov, skyrim has it, quake has it, these two are the only ones i can name at the moment.
i changed mine on skyrim to 85, beyond that it looks like i've just pressed the NOS button.
best option would be for the developer to allow customization on fov.
How do you change it? I'm looking through my settings and I don't know where to do this.
oh man, the "setting generation"
just open your console with ' and type fov x,where x is the fov desired.
Also, as far as i know, all valve games allow fov changes, althought they do limit it to 90 i think
^^^ - not all valve games allow fov change - orange box stuff and newer (tf2/portal2/hl2ep2 etc) does, the older stuff like css hl2 dont allow you to change fov (at least you couldnt before the major update patch going to orangebox engine)
i put fov on both bf3 and skyrim to 90 ;p
for skyrim use console ( press ~ then type fov x, x = number)
i think it heavily depends on monitor size as well, using 100+ degrees on like a 22" monitor seems a bit... weird D:
Noticed it first when i to played Skyrim didn't really know what was going on, felt kinda noxious and always got lost when i turned my head around. Then i remembered they optimized the game for consoles, so i realized i had to go fix the damn fov. Annoying as fuck! How do console people stand out with this?
Human field of vision is not 200. It's closer to 90.
90-100 is a good FOV to have for FPS games.
EDIT: you have to realize that a good FOV for the game will depend on the distance between your eyes and the monitor. Console games are typically played with the player far away from the screen.
Also, it should be noted that, mathematically, the standard perspective projection transforms used in virtually all CG stops working past 180 degrees. It's not an unsolvable problem of course, but it does require doing something more than a simple matrix multiply followed by a division.
@Op: You can change Skyrim's FoV to whatever you want, just use the ` tilde key and type Fov ### and enjoy .
For anyone else there are options, they might require a bit more of an investment for the look and having peripherals , a lot of games are starting to support multi-monitor gaming. My setup currently of 3x 27" monitors, the game I took a picture of wasn't a great example as you cannot change FoV in that game.
It could only be playable on Eyefinity and alikes. It's a cool idea which is already implemented in racing games, but I think it would break multiplayer FPS.
I think it all comes down to monitors. When FPS first came out and started gaining popularity (like in DOOM) we had mainly 4:3 CRT monitors. So it was natural for games to take on that 45 degree to not only fill the whole screen, but give the impression that you looking through the players eyes and you can only see what the player's head looks at (like I mean to say if it was third person you would be able to see what is slightly behind the player and what is to the side of the player). Its grown a lot since then due to the emergence of 16 and other aspect ratios..
If we all had curved monitors I wouldn't be surprised if 200 degree games started cropping up (not only FPS, but driving and racing games too)
But yeah... I thought the BF3 FOV was a little small when ingame but didn't really give much thought to it.
Common console games run at around 60 FOV, usually the minimum setting for PC game is 75 more often around 90 and most games allow you to go further up. Personally I think 90 is good, 110 or 120 depending on game feels superb (in most cases if the game was built around 60 FOV 110 already makes it feel strangely "stretchy", and beyond that it starts to look hilarious (in a bad way). I think even in in core 90-ish games going more than some 135 makes the game look really strange as the "stretching" starts to hit hard.
According to wiki: The normal human visual field extends to approximately 60 degrees nasally (toward the nose, or inward) from the vertical meridian in each eye, to 100 degrees temporally (away from the nose, or outwards) from the vertical meridian, and approximately 60 degrees above and 75 below the horizontal meridian
Blame the consoles and the laziness of developers. 7 year old technology in consoles limits the amount of things that can be displayed at one time, so developers just use low FoV as a trick to improve the graphics in their game. Sometimes they simply just don't bother creating options to increase the FoV on PCs which have a much higher technical capability to display graphics because those games won't sell as much.
Unfortunately, in order for graphics (and thus FoV) to really improve, we need to wait for Sony and Microsoft (because I don't expect Nintendo to come out with a console with amazing power behind it, even with the new Wii U) to come out with new consoles that haven't really been announced yet.
Edit: I need to learn to cut my sentences with periods ><
Problem solved. 90 Has been a standard for PC FPS games for so long. The fact that skyrim defaults to 75 is absurd (probably because it's a console port).
Skyrim is ~70 FOV, and you can manually set it to anything you want by pressing ` for console (left of 123) and typing "fov 90" etc, there is also a code line for .ini file to default it to anything
You can't actually have 200 degree vision on a computer screen because it will not be able to change and focus the way your eyes do, more than 45 degrees is good but in real life your brain fills in much of what is beyond that 45 degrees unless you are actually trying to see with your peripheral.
On November 17 2011 09:15 Ktk wrote: Then again wouldn't there be the issue of that many more polygons to render per frame if you have higher FOV?
Skyrim performance is identical at 60 FOV or 200 - maybe a fault of the game engine, im not sure how it works out, but thats how it is on my system atleast
On November 17 2011 09:18 RevampedPants wrote: You can't actually have 200 degree vision on a computer screen because it will not be able to change and focus the way your eyes do, more than 45 degrees is good but in real life your brain fills in much of what is beyond that 45 degrees unless you are actually trying to see with your peripheral.
You can run like 200 FOV but it just looks really weird, curved image etc
On November 17 2011 09:09 Crisium wrote: So you guys changing your FOV around are indeed stretching the picture, and warping your aspect ratio?
changing fov is like modifying the degree on a wide screen lens, so it'll stretch accordingly. i for one is willing to sacrifice proportion for better view of the surrounding, for example if i have fov at 360, though the screen may be f'ed up, i can see behind my back
In multiplayer fps games I guess the higher the fov the better, since not seeing an opponent in time really matters. Tried increasing it in Skyrim tho and I can't tell I felt a great difference as most ranged (melee too obv) mobs won't be able to sneak up on you if you are constantly moving and looking around, which I do as a mage. So I guess it doesn't really matter unless the AI is godlike...
OP is seriously misleading lol, 45 degrees in Skyrim would be like archery with the bow zoom function.
Oblivion/Skyrim/most first-person games are between 65-90 FOV (Skyrim is 75), and I change games to ~110 FOV in the console controls whenever I can. Anything more than ~120 FOV really requires triple-monitor setups, as you start to get distortions (characters close to you at the outer edges of your field of vision are FATTTTTT) on a single monitor.
Even for ~90-110 FOV in Skyrim depends on your screen resolution, as you really do need at least 1080P with 4x MSAA for it to look good. Developers obviously have to consider the mainstream players, and at 720P or less ~80 FOV looks just about right.
On November 17 2011 09:03 StarDragon wrote: @Op: You can change Skyrim's FoV to whatever you want, just use the ` tilde key and type Fov ### and enjoy .
For anyone else there are options, they might require a bit more of an investment for the look and having peripherals , a lot of games are starting to support multi-monitor gaming. My setup currently of 3x 27" monitors, the game I took a picture of wasn't a great example as you cannot change FoV in that game.
Battlefield looks amazing as well but too lazy to go pull up a picture.
- And anyone commenting on the bezels, your brain filters them out, you never notice them when gaming.
that looks amazing. probably i'll only be looking at the central screen at any point in time, but my peripheral vision will be checking out the peripheral screens, if you know what i mean.
When you set the FOV in a game, can you set the vertical fov too?
I currently have this fucking huge monitor and i'm tired of having a huge monitor with tiny vertical fov.
On November 17 2011 08:35 Badred wrote: Wouldn't it only make sense to have a FOV of 200 degrees on your monitor if your monitor was taking up your entire FOV? Otherwise you've got 200 degrees of game vision taking up 60 degrees of your RL vision, and it looks like you're playing through a fish-eye lens.
I think Badred is right, it would look to weird unless you had a monitor that took up your entire field of vision or at least close to it. If you did have a monitor that size though, it would be sooo sweet!
Used to play some semi-pro Q3 back in the day and my fov was mostly around 110-120, and that was back on a 4:3 screen. Now with the 16: 9 and 16:10 screen, those FoV wouldn't look as weird as it looked back then. I wish games would lock the option out or limit it to a super low value such as 90.
Unfortunately for us, when the industry starts to adopt a default value, they often try to lock the other options out (FoV, Aspect ratio, resolution...). I don't know why the companies always try to force everyone to play the same, I find it really annoying and limits innovation. For example, if you unlock FoV for all games, screen makers might feel the need to exploit that as much as possible and offer wider screens so the screen coverage = our vision. If you always lock the FoV, then you basically give screen makers an excuse to never make something new and just give us the same stuff year after year.
Wewps, I got sidetracked a bit. Customizable FoV (specially for single player games where it can't be exploited as much) would be something I would welcome back with open arms... and pants down o.O
id rather move my mouse around more and have better vision of the things in my view (as they are larger) than have everything on the screen be even more tiny.
also, we may have 200 degree vision fields, but a large portion of that is peripheral, so having 200 degree vision with perfect clarity wouldn't make sense at all.
I think lower FOV works on consoles because a lot of people are sitting further away from their screen, but on PC people are sitting right in front of their monitor, which is why annoying console ported FOVs just simply don't work on PC, because it creates motion sickness/headaches much more easily. A lot of developers don't seem to understand that and make the FOV unchangeable (like in the PC version of MW3), or changeable only through console commands or editing files (like Skyrim).
Some people are alright with low FOVs, but when the FOV is low and you can't change it it can completely put people off a game because they feel sick or get headaches when playing it.
I like when games are beein realisitic and expanding the degree of vision seems like a good idea to me. But extending it more and pushing the limits always make me come up with the question of wehre are the limits? make it realistic and such but don t try to FULLY make it like real life because weak minds won t be able to sepperate or (sry to sound like the simpons referend guys wife) who thinks about the kids? givin them such strong media can realy hurt there mind bc they wont be able to sepperate real/virtuall life!
This video should explain a lot of things But the only way you're going to be "immersed" is when your peripheral vision is also involved I don't see why they would expand it any further than you actually are from the monitor or screen you're looking at
On November 17 2011 11:10 WaZuP wrote: I like when games are beein realisitic and expanding the degree of vision seems like a good idea to me. But extending it more and pushing the limits always make me come up with the question of wehre are the limits? make it realistic and such but don t try to FULLY make it like real life because weak minds won t be able to sepperate or (sry to sound like the simpons referend guys wife) who thinks about the kids? givin them such strong media can realy hurt there mind bc they wont be able to sepperate real/virtuall life!
Is there actually any evidence to support the idea that a child is unable to separate the two worlds?
Most FOVs in first person games are between 70 and 90.
Have you ever played a game with a FOV higher? I've tried with games on like 120 etc... it actually gets really dizzying and awful because while yes, technically the FOV is truer to your eyes, you are viewing it scrunched up on a screen that only takes up probably ~45 degrees of your vision. If monitors stretched all the way around to the top, bottom, and sides of our vision, you would be right. Without monitors like this (or perhaps like helmets with VR to surround our eyes closer to have a smaller screen? would prolly cause eye strain) it just isn't feasible to have such a large FOV.
On November 17 2011 11:39 -orb- wrote: Most FOVs in first person games are between 70 and 90.
Have you ever played a game with a FOV higher? I've tried with games on like 120 etc... it actually gets really dizzying and awful because while yes, technically the FOV is truer to your eyes, you are viewing it scrunched up on a screen that only takes up probably ~45 degrees of your vision. If monitors stretched all the way around to the top, bottom, and sides of our vision, you would be right. Without monitors like this (or perhaps like helmets with VR to surround our eyes closer to have a smaller screen? would prolly cause eye strain) it just isn't feasible to have such a large FOV.
Damn, ninja'd. You said basically what I wanted to say just much better lol. Oh well here is what I had anyway:
They probably won't do 200 because you lose visibility of things in the environment and it is harder to make things look symmetrical on normal desktop monitors. Some games do support it with additional monitors.
This video should explain a lot of things But the only way you're going to be "immersed" is when your peripheral vision is also involved I don't see why they would expand it any further than you actually are from the monitor or screen you're looking at
Ah, I was about to post it. He explains it the best.
The only way that I would want something around 200 degrees for my FOV is if I had like four monitors. Other than that I'll stick to my 90 that I'm used to.
i would imaging it'd be pretty sweet if there were monitors at widths wide enough to reach all the way to each point of you 180 degree view. when you walk forward you would really feel immersed into the game since your peripherals would be seeing everything that was just in front of you pass you by the very next second.
Would it be unsafe for many hours at a time however? I think so.
The reason consoles have a low default FOV is not because of shitty hardware, it's because the FOV is set based on your position relative to what you are viewing. IE, consoles expect you to be on the couch, further away from the TV, so your window you have to look through into the game world will show a smaller section (FOV). A PC should have a higher FOV, because you are normally closer to the monitor, thus it makes more sense to see more through your window into the game.
the whole 45° to 60° fov-thing really sucks and for the most part it is concole-based, bcause games like bf3 and mw3 are converted from console to pc w/out changing a damn thing... really sad...i'd rather stick to the good ol' shooters from ye days when i was grewin' up, but change is imminent.... everyone has its one preferences and principles!
On November 17 2011 12:02 CatNzHat wrote: You want your FoV in an FPS game to match the portion of your FoV that your monitor fills,
For example, my monitor fills 90* of my FoV, so when I play Quake, I set the FoV to 90*
i have this huge ass monitor, so i'd rather just sit really close to my monitor so the monitor takes up 100 degrees of my field of vision or something, and set fov to 100.
but preferably, i'd have 3 monitors that wrap around my head, and i'll set it to 180.
Your eyes use the curvature of the lens to not make it look like a friggin panoramic picture... if the 200 FOV didn't look stupid as shit (like it does in OP imo) then yes, please, make the FOV as high as possible... but as it stands, the FOV is pretty decent around 100-120
On November 17 2011 12:02 CatNzHat wrote: You want your FoV in an FPS game to match the portion of your FoV that your monitor fills,
For example, my monitor fills 90* of my FoV, so when I play Quake, I set the FoV to 90*
i have this huge ass monitor, so i'd rather just sit really close to my monitor so the monitor takes up 100 degrees of my field of vision or something, and set fov to 100.
but preferably, i'd have 3 monitors that wrap around my head, and i'll set it to 180.
yea, I have 2 different monitor setups, I play at 110* on the larger (30") display, and 90* on the smaller (24") one.
This is the main reason why modern FPS games make me dizzy as hell and can't play COD/BF at all :/ I'm just thankful Skyrim has a 3rd person option, or else I wouldn't be able to enjoy it o/*
You THINK you have that much vision, but you actually don't. The area that you can actually see and focus on is probably around 45 degrees. The rest, your brain makes you think that you can see but in actuality the resolution is pretty worthless.
On November 17 2011 13:07 ItsYoungLee wrote: You THINK you have that much vision, but you actually don't. The area that you can actually see and focus on is probably around 45 degrees. The rest, your brain makes you think that you can see but in actuality the resolution is pretty worthless.
doesn't really apply since the same limitation is present when viewing a screen. you can still only focus sharply on a small range of vision. the problem is that we can sense movement out to 200 degrees and immediately focus on it, which is something that these games lack. it totally kills the immersion when you're trying to fight shit with tin cans on your eyes.
I never thought about this... but i agree for some games especially skyrim that you need to able to see more. I'm so going to go though the settings for this. Thanks
There is a huge difference when playing console to PC on the FOV present. As when we are at a PC we are usually no more then a metre away from the screen at all times and the size of the computer screen is much smaller to a TV, so having a larger field of view is much more preferred. When on a console you sit up to 3 metres away and therefore a smaller FOV is preferred. When on a PC I like mine to be upwards of 70 and console is standard 45ish
i thought i was the only one who noticed/cared about this..FPS games are so annoying to me for this reason, although i still have love for Elder Scrolls
It was actually super noticeable in Skyrim. It feels like I need to always look around and have no vision at all. The caves and tunnels are really confusing too. I played Human Revolution right before it and the difference is gigantic. This really feels like a pretty huge downfall for skyrim. When you play it, you should notice it immediately.
I'm actually playing Skyrim in 3rd person now, at least I can see what's happening...
On November 17 2011 08:29 Eiii wrote: The standard FOV on most console games these days is 60 for some reason I don't understand. I don't know why it got knocked down to 60 from the 90 standard that I know from quake, but hey.
The consoles have been grinding their graphical limits since roughly 2007 and 2008, when they decided that in order to preserve Microsoft's promise of high-definition gaming, they started creating lower-resolution games and upscaling them. I'd posit that the narrow field of vision is their way to limit the number of things that have to be rendered in order to play the game. (Not to mention the absolute frustration that a lot of players would feel in trying to swivel their inferior thumbsticks across a distance thirty percent larger and make a killing shot before their opponent does.)
What I notice a lot more in FPSs is that you're zoomed forward way farther than where your eyes would be. Not that that's a bad thing, just an observation.
On November 17 2011 08:29 Eiii wrote: The standard FOV on most console games these days is 60 for some reason I don't understand. I don't know why it got knocked down to 60 from the 90 standard that I know from quake, but hey.
Its probably for performance reasons only. If they could increase the FOV they would.
Also I play at max FOV whenever I can on a 4:3 screen, the proportion changes are barely noticeable.
On November 17 2011 13:21 cmen15 wrote: I never thought about this... but i agree for some games especially skyrim that you need to able to see more. I'm so going to go though the settings for this. Thanks
press ` and type "fov 100".
100 works best for me since i have this massive monitor. i'd imagine that if you have 3 monitors surrounding your face, then you can set it to 200.
FoV requires processing power to project. the main reason most games have such a low FoV, is so you don't have to have a god like computer to play them. Consoles games are forced to be built to a specific parameter to actually run well. I would love options to increase the FoV, this would make things much nicer for people that have the computers able to handle it.
@ RA, Halo 2 had a FoV of 60, it wasn't bad, if you kept falling off things then i think it was just your crappy playing skills....lol
On November 17 2011 13:31 Shikyo wrote: It was actually super noticeable in Skyrim. It feels like I need to always look around and have no vision at all. The caves and tunnels are really confusing too. I played Human Revolution right before it and the difference is gigantic. This really feels like a pretty huge downfall for skyrim. When you play it, you should notice it immediately.
I'm actually playing Skyrim in 3rd person now, at least I can see what's happening...
there seems to be a lot of people posting about skyrims fov so im just gunna leave this here;
To change fov in skyrim open console (~ button on keyboard) and type fov #, eg. fov 90 = 90degree fov
It would only work if you could, like people have said, fill up 200 degrees of your actual vision with the 200 degree fov. 45 is fine for games on a monitor that takes up 45 of your vision in my opinion.
BF3 has something like this but I haven't checked it out since I play on super low resolution (aka wouldn't change much). Very cool though that its there, hopefully one day we can have the standard vision like in real life, that would be so cool.
Skyrim's default is 65, and if you have the PC version you can just use fov 200 in console :|
But it's not the same as normal vision. The screen is completely clear and crisp, and you get warped imagery as "peripheral vision", when instead only what you're focusing on should be detailed, with the rest indistinct.
On November 17 2011 08:35 unichan wrote: Small FOVs give me motion sickness . That's why I tend to stay away from first person games... but Skyrim is so fun...
the standard fov for next gen fps isn't 45, it's 70
previously the standard was 90
the reason all the game companies started doing this was for performance reasons. if you're looking at less stuff at once, you can cram more detail in
on a computer monitor you get extremely bad fish-eye with an fov of 180, let alone 200. i think the absolute threshold of sanity is about 130 but even that's pushing it.
terrible OP i'm afraid, if you're going to post on a subject you could at least do the bare minimum research to learn what the current values used are
you can't just crop an image and be like "well thats what this fov is like", it doesn't work that way at all
playing with a very narrow fov is like looking through a telescope. things that are very far away also appear close to you, but things very close to you are not proportionally closer, rather they seem about the same. there's much more visual transformation going on than just cropping a photo.
Large FoV looks really bad unless you have wide monitors with side monitors for your peripheral vision.
Lower FoV also means that for campaign design they only have to make events trigger directly in front of you. It's less work. If some fps game had 200 degrees for fov devs would have to add in things to happen on the sides. It would be more demanding of the system and cause a drop in frame rates.
I think for FPS games a low field of view is somewhat tolerable.
For driving games it's absolutely horrible. And FPS games with driving parts in that narrow fov? You wonder why it's so damn annoying to drive in those games. Especially one like Halo.
If that happened, then all of my knife attacks from behind would be harder to pull off, and that is the only thing keeping my KD above 0.5 in MW2! Ah well, lets start again in MW3
I used to play quake (one) at 120fov I think that was pretty much standard for most people online (edit: snap guy above ^^), I quite liked it... I was really sad when games started dropping the option to change fov. (I think pretty much when hl2 came out most games stopped offering at as an option)
I don't think there should be one "set" fov for competitive play... There are trade-off's for increasing/lowering your fov (assuming screen size doesn't change) so there's no one best, and it would allow players a customisation that actually matters...
On November 17 2011 22:48 Noxie wrote: I am guessing it is so low due to monitors being small. As long as there is some option to change it, I think it is fine.
Its a lot to do with platform, consolegames you play from couch far away so small fov is not a problem but with PC you are really near to your monitor so wider fov needs to be used. Also consoles have so less power these days that they have to use tricks like smaller fov to make the game run better or have some extra on graphics somewhere else.
I've been thinking for ages that gaming rigs like the Alienware monitor up there (friggin sweet!) or triple monitors would become standard for FPS gaming. It's always driven me nuts that I have to look directly at something with my character to see it, like having to whip your view back and forth to make sure you don't get ambushed by someone walking up to you 90 degrees from where you're looking.
I'm wondering - is there any technical reason that graphics cards couldn't render the peripheral side monitors in such a setup with significantly reduced resolution? High resolution isn't really necessary for your peripheral vision, and that would allow cards to run all three monitors without having a triple rendering load with the detail you configure for your main monitor.
On November 17 2011 22:32 skipgamer wrote: I used to play quake (one) at 120fov I think that was pretty much standard for most people online (edit: snap guy above ^^), I quite liked it... I was really sad when games started dropping the option to change fov. (I think pretty much when hl2 came out most games stopped offering at as an option)
I don't think there should be one "set" fov for competitive play... There are trade-off's for increasing/lowering your fov (assuming screen size doesn't change) so there's no one best, and it would allow players a customisation that actually matters...
that is also what i played on, when i was playing quake
the highest i've seen in any professional gamer's cfg file is 135, and personally i think you'd need a very, very large monitor to get away with that
120 value is probably the most common on the high end, some rail heavy players like to use values around 100
i think the only thing unanimously agreed on in quake/ut is that 90 is just too low
I was playing skyrim recently and the default FOV made me want to throw up after 10 minutes
I was angry because I thought FOV functions didnt exist on Skyrim, but thankfully I was saved by a quick google search
I think 'Default' FOV for ANYTHING should be 80 to 90. Console gamers say since they sit so far back from the TV they don't feel the effects of small FOV but I think this is a terrible trend in modern games that needs to die.
On November 17 2011 08:29 jinorazi wrote: good games have a setting to change your fov, skyrim has it, quake has it, these two are the only ones i can name at the moment.
i changed mine on skyrim to 85, beyond that it looks like i've just pressed the NOS button.
best option would be for the developer to allow customization on fov.
How do you change it? I'm looking through my settings and I don't know where to do this.
oh man, the "setting generation"
just open your console with ' and type fov x,where x is the fov desired.
Also, as far as i know, all valve games allow fov changes, althought they do limit it to 90 i think
Thank you so much! The difference between the standard setting and 90-110 (which I greatly prefer) is incredible. This will help me enjoy the game much much more!
Also thanks to the OP for this thread!
I personally feel that fov of 45 is an abomination. I can barely get a feeling of what's going on around me. However, fov of 180 (or 200 as you suggest) would be just as bad at the very least because it cannot be properly displayed on a normal monitor. Personally, I feel very comfortable with 90 and maybe slightly above.
On November 17 2011 08:29 jinorazi wrote: good games have a setting to change your fov, skyrim has it, quake has it, these two are the only ones i can name at the moment.
i changed mine on skyrim to 85, beyond that it looks like i've just pressed the NOS button.
best option would be for the developer to allow customization on fov.
How do you change it? I'm looking through my settings and I don't know where to do this.
oh man, the "setting generation"
just open your console with ' and type fov x,where x is the fov desired.
Also, as far as i know, all valve games allow fov changes, althought they do limit it to 90 i think
Really? I thought they stopped with the source engine, like they allow it but sv_cheats has to be on or something?
What everyone else said, our vision might be wide but it is not "fish eye" or curved, we see in a "flat" way and so while we are centering on what's in front of us or where our eyes are pointing, the periphery is not curved or bent in any way but rather blurry and faint (and lacking in color vision). To have such a wide vision would not be possible on a television, unless you had one the size of a gymnasium.
ive always thought this. fps games suffer from the lack of peripheral vision... not too man people can have a 3 monitor set up, and not many games support such a thing. It would really add to the immersivness (is that a word?) of a fps game imo. Catching someone out of the corner of your eye in say bf3, would be such an added skill to a genre with a limited number of skill sets (imho)
I think it would be silly to have a 200 degree view on a regular 14 inch screen. I guess the 14 inch screen takes up only about 30% of your field of view which means that it should only display a 60 degrees view.
The console's began narrowing FOV because the graphics card couldn't handle wide FOV. You have to render more with a wider FOV. This has been happening since Goldeneye to Killzone.
Personally i wear glasses so my FOV regularly is about 120 or so to the sides and possibly less than 100 up and down so maybe that gives the reason its never overly bothered me
A Fov too agressivly high will kill the frames per second way too much, since the gpu would have to calculate the diffrence between narrow and non-narrow view.
Thats the main reason they make it that way. You mentioned Skyrim as beeing one of the games that has a ver small FOV. This is becouse the consoles have not improved in the past years, so to have better grapics, ou kinda need to make compromises (like textures for example, and FOV is there as well).
FOV also depends very higly on the size of your screen. If its very big, the % in change of the side/center diffrence would not be so easy to notice.
holy shit so people with mutliple monitors and a video card capable actually have an advantage over everyone who can't afford it.
Sounds like batman to me.
BOT, this probably explains why I don't enjoy FPS games as much. Now I have to setup a bunch of monitors and try it. Also this would be really good if you have a really big monitor and you could put all the screens on 1 monitor.
PS- Imagine this in sc2. That would be amazing. (so that you still have the mouse walls on your main screen, but you have vision of every other screen as if you had control over it (but no control until you move your main screen there). So kind of like a real time giant minimap.
PPS- Does anyone have video of someone playing with it? (like obviously a guy with a camera behind the computer)
You can just change it in Skyrim console command: fov "xxx" xxx representing the angle you want. I am playing at fov 100 and the game is awesome. The default fov is pain for the brain.
On November 17 2011 13:07 ItsYoungLee wrote: You THINK you have that much vision, but you actually don't. The area that you can actually see and focus on is probably around 45 degrees. The rest, your brain makes you think that you can see but in actuality the resolution is pretty worthless.
doesn't really apply since the same limitation is present when viewing a screen. you can still only focus sharply on a small range of vision. the problem is that we can sense movement out to 200 degrees and immediately focus on it, which is something that these games lack. it totally kills the immersion when you're trying to fight shit with tin cans on your eyes.
Hmm I still think it applies with standard monitors because you're watching them from a distance, and it is unnatural to have more than 50 degrees of vision or so visible within your real-life 45 degree FOV. Your argument might apply more if we were talking about those screen that are actually projected from glasses into your eyes. For monitors, it seems unnatural to have too much FOV.
Custom FoV sounds like a good thing, but unless everyone knows how to do it through in-game tutorials or through options menus that clearly explain what FoV stands for, it's an unfair advantage which some people have over others. Sure, it's arguable that players who aren't "good enough" won't benefit from being able to see more on their screen, albeit the things they can see are smaller and harder to hit; however, if they also had no idea that they could change these settings to begin with, that's just poor design. Better tutorials and interface options which aren't hidden in some bogus console are what the FPS games might need. Quake and Skyrim aren't the only games, either. That "fit screen" option in some games also alters your FoV. I made it as small as possible in CoD, for example. It turns out having an extra 2 inches of visible area on all 4 sides of the screen is pretty good. Sure, your gun looks smaller, but it's less favourable to have a gun that takes up 50% of a narrow FoV, so whatevs.
I don't know why ppl are saying "Omg I changed skyrim fov to 110 and it looks great omgomg wowwww" and stuff like that, it looks awful to me.
These 2 pictures are with but 90 degrees, it gets exponentially worse the higher the fov for me:
looks fine i guess...
DAT ARM.
Note that I didn't move my character at all, I just looked a bit to the right.
Am I doing it wrong?
ps screw you guys I was fine with it before but now after playing around with fov for 5 mins I am super dizzy x_x
i can't even play it at 65 degrees (default) atm because I notice the phatness at the edges of everything. ffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
EPT![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1284194/panorama-sali2000.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.sencar.hr/razno/panorama-sali2000.jpg)
) has fov 90 so its all fine. I did notice skyrim has a retardedly narrow default fov too
. That's why I tend to stay away from first person games... but Skyrim is so fun...
screens..)![[image loading]](http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk157/StarDragon102/IMG_0806.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/D4BUO.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/images/2008/01/06/alienware_screen.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FrHGd.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/g9Yee.jpg)
