Standard fov for 1920x1080
In the end you need to use higher POVs to display more horizontally (or vertically), and on planar displays this leeds to distortions. My point here is not to prove that 4:3 is a more natural ratio, but to disprove that 16:9 covers your FOV better (or show "more") and sadly thats what the public was tought through marketing (which is about bulletpoints to sell product). If you further look at "high end cinema" (IMAX), you will see that the aspect-ratio 1.44 is somewhere between 1.33 (4:3) and 1.78 (16:9) - given it uses a nonplanar screen of course.
If you look at other aspects like the area we can actually "focus" (see sharp) then you`ll see that the shape is more like a circle. By your logic it would be best to make the screen as wide as possible and only a few mm high as that would resemble the human FOV most accurately. But then I guess in that respect a circular screen is most efficientĬlick to expand.Its also a fact that you cant cover your vision horizontally even if you have a theoretically infite wide (planar) screen. Being able to see left and right in the immediate view, but not the enemy on the balcony above you, does highlight the limits of the 16:9 format. Shooters are generally built this way these days with targets on different heights. However in some games the interest is uniform around the player, and being able to see the same amount in all directions would be beneficial. Football is a good example where the widecscreen format better fits the playing area. The player takes a human(ised) role where the interest is more in the horizontal direction, with not so much vertical to worry about. So a screen desgined to absolutely fill your vision would need to be 16:9 or perhaps even wider (although there's no proper vision there).įor most games this works. And if you sit with the widescreen's vertical filling your own vertical visual FOV, the horizontal FOV of a 16:9 also fills out nicely, whereas a 4:3 leaves margins either side of the screen. As the human FOV is panoramic, on paper it doesn't make sense to have proportionally more vertical space. My guess is that the 16:9 format is less 'wasteful'. I really want to compile a list of FOV settings for many 16:9 games I have a definitely preference for how wide or narrow a game's FOV should be, but I want to know the numbers to go along with them. I've tried to google for them, but it's tough to find the figures I want, because the ones that usually show up in search are those for 4:3 or 16:10 ratios on computer monitors. I want to know the exact FOV settings of COD4, Turok, Bioshock, and FC2. Bioshock before the official patch/fix looked like it had a similiarly small/narrow FOV I definitely prefer the new setting (disabling "FOV lock"), which makes it look more like COD4 and most other games to my eyes.īut I want to know the actual numbers for all these games. Turok for example, has a more zoomed in, narrower FOV than COD4. I can tell the difference visually, that some games look "narrower" or more "zoomed-in" relative to other games. After Far Cry 2 came out and stoked some ire from those complaining about the poor widescreen implementation (or the slightly too-narrow FOV), I've started to wonder about what the various different FOV settings there are out there in games, particularly 16:9 games.