[zapatista]

Originally Posted by The Kraken

Not really There's no technical reason that limits the FOV

yes there sure is, and its called "Gnomonic distortion"

like all current flight simulator projects i know of (so far) IL-2 uses the Gnomonic projection method, and most likely BoB will do as well, in which case we will meet the same limitations. to explain this phenomena a little further, and the limitations it includes, i'll give some direct quotes by "lurch" at the zoo 4 or 5 yrs ago

Originally Posted by Lurch

IL-2 uses Gnomonic projection for the 1e person view. This is exactly the same as an image produced by a so-called "rectilinear" lens used by architectural photographers. All straight lines are always drawn straight, no matter where they appear in the view. But the main drawback is the severe radial distortion in wide fields of view. To visualize this kind of projection, imagine a transparent globe of the Earth, with a tiny light bulb located in its exact centre. Place a very large, perfectly flat sheet of paper against the globe, say with the contact point of the sheet and the globe at the location of your home town. Now turn on the light, and observe the lines of latitude/longitude and coastlines, etc. as projected onto the paper.

Within relatively close distances of your home, all will look pretty normal. But more distant regions will become progressively enlarged and stretched. In fact, it's impossible to map a full hemisphere (180 degrees) or more of a globe. Any place that's located 90 degrees from the centre of projection (your home town in this example) will appear to be projected infinitely far away on the sheet of paper.

So as you can see, with the Gnomonic projection there is an absolute limit of 180 degrees (a 90 degree radius from the centre of projection) for any projected view. In practice a more realistic limit, after which radial distortion becomes utterly extreme, would be about 120 degrees. But even that looks pretty weird. As I recall, the MS Flight Sim line allows such radically wide FOVs (with the associated distortions on the widest views).

and

Originally Posted by lurch

A little-appreciated aspect of this is the variation of image scale across a wide angle view generated with the Gnomonic projection. If one were to generate a near-180 degree wide view, the central portions would be in effect infinitesimally small. A plane crossing the field would be a wee point in the central parts of the view, but would expand to a huge, near arrow-like streak as it approached the edge of the view.

so unless a different way is developed to model the 3D world in BoB/il2, we will meet the exact same limitations

Originally Posted by lurch

I'm sure you've all seen the effects of Gnomonic distortion while playing IL-2. The most readily observable symptoms are the enlarged oval versions of circular objects which appear toward the edges/corners of the screen when using the wider FOV settings, especially the widest.

so as you can see, there sure is a reason why 90 degree is currently the max FoV, and anything higher brings in significantly further distortions

if you have any specific technical information that contradicts this and makes an alternative hypothesis i'd love to hear it

note: there are artificial ways you can force much higher FoV's then 90', but they obviously produce MAJOR distortions. some gamers in 1e person shooters use those to artificially increase their peripheral vision and get an advantage over their opponents, but that again is for "gamers gaming the game". for il2/BoB better peripheral vision is obviously needed to equal what a real pilot could see from the cockpit, but there is no real alternative then getting more monitors side by side (with each able to display max 90 FoV you could combine 3 widescreens set at 60 FoV to get your total of 180 FoV)

Originally Posted by The Kraken

As Blackdog has said, SoW will probably feature higher field of view settings now that widescreens are common, and I expect we'll see 120° or even more as an option.

programing a game for widescreen resolutions is a completely different issue (from FoV), and hopefully BoB will indeed have those directly available in the settings