FOV; narrow, middle, or wide?

[goobyplz]

So I am having this problem in shooter/melee games, and doom 2016 is possibly the best middle ground. Hopefully some people can give me suggestions.

Been rocking some mordhau lately, and melee games like this pretty much require a wide field of view, because its a mostly melee game, and when you get in the fray, you need to have as wide as peripheral vision as you can so you can watch your flanks for things coming in at your sides. This is a problem, however, when it comes to throwing weapons, and bows. Because the field of view is so wide, you are technically "zoomed out" and so it is hard to use ranged attacks.

Then there is of course shooter games, tarkov, counter strike etc. These games are better with fairly low fields of view, because it technically zooms in your vision, and so makes targets at a range bigger, which is especially useful when you are trying to hit something behind a reticle. I recently realized I was applying my mordhau logic to my tarkov FOV, and when I lowered my FOV in tarkov I did much better.

And then there are games like doom 2016 or warframe, where you are expected to both shoot AND melee. What should you do here? too narrow and you cant watch your peripherals for melee range. Too wide and the zoom on all your shots is comprimized.

So I wonder, what fields of view does everyone use? Do you have a general all purpose setting or do you customize your FOV for each of your games? Do you have any reasoning behind your setting or are you just going with what feels right?

Discuss.

[No_Quarter]

I put it as wide as it can without bird eye effect. At that point I find it useless to go further as I can't make out of anything there, yet alone flick my reticle to it.

My general rule is not going much over 100 degrees horizontal, for some reason DE represents it in vertical FOV but bit of tuning is enough.

FOV is used to calculate your mouse sensitivity and changing that in games drastically can feel weird. Most games allow it to go to 100-ish so that's good enough for me.

There is not general "BEST" - to each their own. I dislike bird eye cause I play fast and with high sensitivity so I am fine flicking my mouse left and right cause it's in my wrist. And also when you play fast distortion from bird eye can get to you and make you dizzy.

People with lower sensitivity who use elbow movement may find it ok to have wider FOV as their general effective area is much more narrow than mine in terms of movement - I can 360 with easy 2 flicks as lifting my mouse and reseting it's position is much faster for me but low sense mouse needs 2 lifts and like 1 meter of movement to get there.

[Pakaku]

Warframe isn't a very demanding game, so I suppose you can play at lower FOVs if you're comfortable that way. But no, I would never ever play at a low FOV in a first-person shooter. More field of vision means seeing more to the sides of your vision, and in any competitive game that will put you at a disadvantage.

[Vayde Knyght]

Generally speaking, you want to put your FOV as high as you are comfortable with.
The higher your FOV is, the more you can see at once.
The biggest thing to avoid with higher FOV is the fish-eye effect that happens when it's too high. Not everyone sees that as an issue, but it does make flicking.. different, which can be quite problematic.
If a high FOV (that isn't causing too much fish-eye) is giving you issues with fine aim, try lowering your mouse sensitivity.

[Mio Rin]

Warframe has multiple settings to make both gunplay and melee work well, with separate aim sensitivity settings for regular and down sights aiming, option for detaching melee aiming from the camera and aim/sprint toggle options.

I keep the FoV at around 78 ( in-game vertical) and have detached the camera from melee aiming.
This gives me the best combat experience where I can toggle ADS for long range shooting, while having a more free range of direction and higher turn speed for crowd melee.

[No_Quarter]

Originally posted by Vayde_Knyght:

The higher your FOV is, the more you can see at once.
.

Originally posted by Pakaku:

. More field of vision means seeing more to the sides of your vision, and in any competitive game that will put you at a disadvantage.

this is not really how it works, eyes have a very narrow focus and if we take example of super ultra wide screens that are like 32/9 ratio - you need to move your eyes a lot to see everything.

And brain is really picky on what it registers, it's kinda like brain is running a quick filter on relevant vs not relevant. Vast majority of information your eyes see you will not register at all as they are thrown out as not relevant.

So efficiency is a thing, there is a point where more information on screen is not gonna mean you are gonna see more.

Example for efficiency to learn - things that move are relevant. That is what a lot of higher level players employ and that's how they do those crazy flicks that seem to happen 0.15s after information pops.

Competitive is more about knowing angles, fish eye distortion on the sides makes it way harder to flick to that even if it helps you find info you are less likely to respond well enough and fast enough. But if your mouse is not in the right place to begin with it's highly unlikely FOV will give you an advantage. FOV does not help you clear angles, your aim has to be there to begin with or you ded.

[Ratt]

I just use the minimap to find enemies anyway because the lighting is usually so terrible that trying to find things by peering into the non-HUD graphics is a waste of time, so FOV settings mean nothing to me.

[Vayde Knyght]

Originally posted by No_Quarter:

Originally posted by Vayde_Knyght:

The higher your FOV is, the more you can see at once.
.

So efficiency is a thing, there is a point where more information on screen is not gonna mean you are gonna see more.

..what, like

Originally posted by Vayde_Knyght:

The biggest thing to avoid with higher FOV is the fish-eye effect that happens when it's too high. Not everyone sees that as an issue, but it does make flicking.. different, which can be quite problematic.

of course you want to avoid fish-eye, but if you put it about as high as you can get it without causing fish-eye, that means that the narrow focus you mention is wider, because there's more info in the same amount of space.. which is an advantage in the cases where you actually do need to react, right?

I would certainly appreciate further elaboration, if you have the time. :)

[No_Quarter]

Originally posted by Vayde_Knyght:

Originally posted by No_Quarter:

So efficiency is a thing, there is a point where more information on screen is not gonna mean you are gonna see more.

..what, like

made with assumption that you do not have infinite amount of time to spend looking at the screen.

As suggested brain filters out a lot of excess information and you do not even notice it so there is a diminishing return to it - you are gonna move in game, right? Considering that then there is a finite amount of time you will spent watching one angle.

Do your eyes see entire monitor at once? Or do you have to move them around to see? Our focal point is much MUCH smaller than the screen, it barely covers the character.
At which point it may become easier to move your mouse around and not just stand there and spin your eyes around to see what's happening.

Cause in any game you are instantly a better player if you move more. In Warframe enemies have penalty to accuracy depending on your movement, some maneuvers grant you 0% chance to be hit during execution of them
In PvP other players struggle to aim at you if you move more.

So assuming you do not sit in same place it is much much better not to overdo FOV cause with lots of movement fish eye effect is far more obvious and hurts you more. And that's a disadvantage.

And I ultimately agree with your statement for going as high as you can without fish eye being a problem.

My explanation stands for why you may not want to go too high, fish eye distorts so even if you get info because of crazy high FOV it is hard to calculate the flick with it and react crazy fast as you can with FOV being between 80-105 horizontal with even 105 being a bit rough on the screen corners.
And it is a question if you will even see the thing you will need to see with that much distorted information - it may look different or you just may be stuck looking at something else which is no different from using lower FOV and moving a mouse to spot things.

Angles you need to clear with your eyes are not random, they are predictable and turning your mouse to check them is not a magic trick. Even in BR games where it's as random as it gets but still pretty predictable as you know map, you saw nearby landings, you saw circle, popular drop locations will move to circle and you have general idea where people are, audio information is also a great indicator, kill feed - high FOV is not on the list of things that help you in encounters.
Positioning, minimap, communication, understanding maps, spawns, rotations, knowing your enemy and predicting moves ahead of time is what is information that wins games. Especially the last one, which is why you do not need high FOV cause you should already be looking at the direction where they are coming from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPOA_w9YlkA

[Vayde Knyght]

Originally posted by No_Quarter:

- you are gonna move in game, right?

No one said anything about sitting still

Originally posted by No_Quarter:

Do your eyes see entire monitor at once? Or do you have to move them around to see? Our focal point is much MUCH smaller than the screen, it barely covers the character.
At which point it may become easier to move your mouse around and not just stand there and spin your eyes around to see what's happening.

I'm not saying look at the whole screen at once.. higher FOV means that small focal point in the middle has more stuff in it

Originally posted by No_Quarter:

And I ultimately agree with your statement for going as high as you can without fish eye being a problem.

..oh, i thought you were trying to give me reasons that i was incorrect.