FOV settings

[adonys]

Originally Posted by zapatista

there is no complex mathematics involved at all

for 95% of il2/CoD players they sit at roughly an arms length from their flat screen monitors. monitor size for them varies from 19 to 30' , and the viewing distance is determined by the monitor technology (lcd in this case). some sit a little closer then that, some a little further away, but it wont vary by much. hence it is pretty simple for each of those screen sizes (19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, and 30) to determine with a basic formula what the correct FoV is, and once set to this value the player can see all ingame objects in their correct sizes, and knowing the object they look at they will know from its size what the distance is. for my 27' pc screen that FoV is 50 or 55, and in il2 i had that set to my "normal" keyboard key, and was able to use quick snap views to 35 or 90 FoV to briefly overcome the limitations of sitting behind a pc monitor rather then look out of a real cockpit in ww2.

the fact a large number of il2/CoD players never made that mental leap results in them either playing in a dinky-toy world where all objects have shrunk (and hence it distorts distance perspective) when set to an artificially wide FoV, or they are playing superman flightsim by giving themselves "magic magnification" eyes to zoom in and spot minuscule objects on the ground no ww2 pilot would ever find.

its a very different experience flying around in the il2/CoD world with the correct FoV and limit yourself to that most of the time, its err well you know, more "real".

it absolutely boggles the mind that luthier has succeeded in leaving out simple well working features that existed in the il2 series, and right now for CoD as a result is PREVENTING people from seeing the CoD in-world objects (and scenery) correctly.

for someone involving math into discussion, you're pretty far away off, mate.

first of all, because when you're measuring an object's apparent size on the screen by varying FOV until that object's apparent size seems to be right, it doesn't mean the object actually is at the proper distance which would give that same apparent in reality. that's one thing.

another is that you don't actually know which is the real scale of the objects in-game.

a third one would be that zooming has the same scaling effect (ie is done with the same %) on all the objects on the scene, unless there's special code to over-ride that.

a fourth one is that actually FOV is firstly about the field of view, not about the right distance/scale/apparent size of the rendered objects. hence the name FOV (Field of View), and the formula for computing the FoV depending on screen's size is actually about matching human's FoV (ie "view's width" = how much to the right/left can you see a close object), not matching object's apparent size, and using it to get object's apparent size is wrong.

if you want a FoV which would give you the closest resemblance of object's apparent size, you should:
- make sure the scale of the objects is right (draw the real wingspan of a known airplane into the game's editor (using game's "meter" scale) and compare it with that plane's wingspan. even better, import a proper known made object (using a real meter scale) into the game and measure it with game's "meter".
- put that object at 100 "meters" and measure it's apparent size against a game's known FoV (at 60 degrees FoV, and 100 meters away, the screen width's represents X meters. put two objects at x/2 meters away from the center of the airplane, measure the apparent distance between them on the screen at that known FoV and distance, and then, by comparing airplane's apparent size with the distance between the 2 object's apparent size, you can see the real airplane's apparent size). then repreat vy changing FoV until you'll get the proper airplane's apparent size.

you should see that the proper FoV for that it's at around 30 degrees (even less than more), for a same relative scale, no special object groups scaling code, normal screen size.

simpler than that, assuming that the scale of the objects is right for all game object's, adjust your FoV until the targeting apparatus (or just the crosshair) has the same real meters apparent size on your monitor as if in reality you would keep that targeting apparatus (or crosshair) at screen's distance (from between your eyes and screen) from you. then you'll have your proper FoV, again at around 30 degrees, and you can check to see then if airplane's apparent size at 100 "meters" straight in front of you matches the crosshair's measurement as it should in reality.

pretty nasty stuff, right?

the ONE and ONLY solution to object's apparent size in a virtual world having a sufficient FoV (not causing tunnel vision) and objects having the same scale, is to have special code scaling the objects depending on the current FoV used and their distance from the camera.

it's a nightmare from computation's point of view (because forcing the scale of the objects to match the visual appearance will make the objects bigger than they should be, and then.. what would you do with collision? because there's a difference between shooting at a packet of cigars and shooting at a door..), but there were games who did it successfully.

CFS2 was one of them, if I remember right. flying in formation was really feeling like flying in formation in there