Why does ArmA 3 have console FoV?

[rawalanche 13]

Hi,

does anyone know why ArmA 3 has console FoV? Especially when i enter any interior space, it gets super hard to orient and i get motion sick quickly. I know i can adjust FoV (not sure if it's not considered cheating in multiplayer), but i can not understand why PC only game has console FoV. I can understand why poor console ports have console FoV, but i really don't understand why would ArmA need to diminish so low.

[chiefboatsret 14]

Wot???

[devilslayersbane 28]

Hi,

does anyone know why ArmA 3 has console FoV? Especially when i enter any interior space, it gets super hard to orient and i get motion sick quickly. I know i can adjust FoV (not sure if it's not considered cheating in multiplayer), but i can not understand why PC only game has console FoV. I can understand why poor console ports have console FoV, but i really don't understand why would ArmA need to diminish so low.

Most likely, it was a design decision to keep things from looking funny. My suggestion is to boost your FOV up to 80 using the arma 3 fov changer.

[ceeeb 147]

Assuming a 16:9 display, the default horizontal field of view in Arma 3 is 90°, which is pretty standard for most games. You can also toggle zoom out to ~111°. Edited November 1, 2014 by ceeeb

[bullet purveyor 85]

Console fov must be one of the dumbest new thing to say. If you want your game to look like a crapy fish eye lens go ahead and turn it up, don't try to force it as default for the rest of us.

[vran. 13]

It's probably part of Bohemia's master plan to streamline the series to make it more appealing to a broader audience and eventually port over to consoles and laugh in the face of the dedicated mil simmers over here as they rage over losing the last such kind of game to younglings with gamepads. I kid... ;)

I'd say 80-90 FOV feels more 'real' on a smaller screen monitor than something like 120 which distorts the view quite a bit. It's not a 'twitch' shooter after all... :p

[amatt 10]

You can easily change the FOV in your .'Arma3Profile' file.

[rasdenfasden 12]

In most situations better sight over long distances is more important than having a Quakelike wide FOV. Whenever you do need a wide field of view, you can just bind a key to toggle zoom out.

[mistyronin 1181]

Technically human view has a 45° FoV. So obviously anything above or below that is "unrealistic". Games tend to add a wider one, to give you more situation awareness.

Besides that, Arma's FoV works fine for most of people. If you have personal issues with it, just modify it.

[maturin 12]

Technically human view has a 45° FoV. So obviously anything above or below that is "unrealistic".

Eh what?!

With peripheral vision, the human eye(s) have an FOV of almost 180 degrees. I'm sitting here waggling my fingers on either side of my head and I can see them just fine.

[AdamWayne 1]

Console fov must be one of the dumbest new thing to say. If you want your game to look like a crapy fish eye lens go ahead and turn it up, don't try to force it as default for the rest of us.

So anything higher than the default 70* is fisheye? Industry standard for PC is at least 90*.

Technically human view has a 45° FoV. So obviously anything above or below that is "unrealistic". Games tend to add a wider one, to give you more situation awareness.

Besides that, Arma's FoV works fine for most of people. If you have personal issues with it, just modify it.

45*? That's pretty far off.

"The approximate field of view of an individual human eye is 95° away from the nose, 75° downward, 60° toward the nose, and 60° upward, allowing humans to have an almost 180-degree forward-facing horizontal field of view. With eyeball rotation of about 90° (head rotation excluded, peripheral vision included), horizontal field of view is as high as 270°. About 12–15° temporal and 1.5° below the horizontal is the optic nerve or blind spot which is roughly 7.5° high and 5.5° wide."

[rawalanche 13]

Yes, exactly.

Human field of view is nearly 180°. Field of focus and field of view are two very different things. The problem here is that many people get motion sick very quickly when present in closed quarters with wrong FoV. You will find 90° FoV on 15" display as unnatural looking as 75° on 28" one. And don't even try to come up with nonsense like that human eye has limited focus area. Sure it has, and if you have FoV that's correctly proportional to your screen size and distance you are from it, then you will never ever see entire screen in focus. You wil always see only partial area of the screen you are looking at (eg, you cant focus on bottom left and top right corner of your monitor at the same time).

YES, I DO KNOW that i can edit the config file to change it, i am just afraid it may be considered cheating on some of the multiplayer servers. And sure some of you don't have problems with it. FoV must not ever be rigid, because you will need very different FoV if you play on 15" laptop screen having eyes 50cm from the display, compared to playing on 24" screen and being 35cm from display. The larger screen and closer you are to it, the more FoV you need. And since ArmA is more of a hardcore game for gamers who usually have solid rigs, i would really expect default FoV to be set at some reasonable value. Or at VERY LEAST have slider to adjust it right in the UI.

My screen is 16:10 1920*1200 24 inch panel, and default is far from sufficient.

---------- Post added at 01:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:42 PM ----------

I even made a picture explaining why FoV in games should never be rigid, and especially in such advanced game as ArmA, which is all about customization.

In general, not all people do get motion sick when FoV is not properly aligned with the setting they plan in, but there is significant amount of people who do, and here's why we get sick:

First row shows situation where you sit in average distance from your screen, and your screen is of average size, but games you play have variable FoV. On the left is game with too narow FoV, which is not adjustable. You can see how tapered the field of view gets, and if you imagine looking on your screen as if you were through a window, everything behind the window looks as if you were permanently zoomed in. Especially in closed quarters, and looking around makes game world swing faster across your screen than your brain expects, which causes confusion and results to nausea.

In the middle is game with FoV that happens to align with your setting, so you have no issues at all. On the right, you can see effect of overshot FoV, which results to that usual "fisheye" effect.

Second row shows same situation, but your screen size changes and FoV is fixed. If you have correct FoV for average desktop computer, but you play the game on something fully, like let's say 15" laptop, then you will get fisheye effect. With average screen, you are a happy camper, and with too large screen, you can get motion sick even with correct desktop FoV.

Third row shows that it also matters how far you sit away from your screen. Some people tend to sit reaaaaly far away from the screen, and those would tend to complain about fisheye effect even if they got average sized screen with correct desktop FoV.

So this it the reason FoV in PC games should NEVER EVER, EVER!!!! be rigid.

Edited November 3, 2014 by rawalanche

[Dr_Defimus 10]

so we assume that the fov is set on 90° and in my case i have an 28" monitor. In this case the sweet distance would be around 32 cm from the monitor (half the monitor width). If im honest i have seen nowbody who sits so close to a monitor like mine. So you can say even 90 seemes to be to high ....

[rawalanche 13]

so we assume that the fov is set on 90° and in my case i have an 28" monitor. In this case the sweet distance would be around 32 cm from the monitor (half the monitor width). If im honest i have seen nowbody who sits so close to a monitor like mine. So you can say even 90 seemes to be to high ....

Both horizontal and vertical FoV need to be taken into account. It's not meant to be calculated exactly, but rather give flexibility to remove the "constant zoom" effect that causes nausea. Whatever ArmA has by default, i do not believe it's 90° horizontal. I spend at least 3 hours a day in Unreal Engine with my horizontal FoV set to 90°, and it's significantly different to what i get in ArmA.

[iceman77 18]

People still play with the default FOV? :eek:

[devilslayersbane 28]

It's not cheating. You won't get kicked out of a KOTH server. I had my FOV set up to 100 for the longest time, but then I reduced it to 90. And no, Arma has a roughly 60-70 degree field of view, if you take the time to look at your radar in a vehicle (in 3rd person).

[mistyronin 1181]

The human field of view when focus ( in a normal situation ) is 30-45 degrees, and the peripheral view is slightly more.

[rawalanche 13]

Of course you dont have entire FoV in focus, but that's not the point FFS, you need to fill peripheral vision with something correct, otherwise you will still get sick. If games emulated only Field of Focus, but not field of view, all games would look like seen through eyes of person with tunnel vision syndrome.

Non the less, i think i got my answer... if FoV change doesn't get me kicked out of servers, then i am pretty much happy. Still a bit disappointed though, that the option is not present in UI.

[ceeeb 147]

Whatever ArmA has by default, i do not believe it's 90° horizontal.

If you want to find out, CBA also contains a function that measures vertical FOV. Also, below is a script to check for yourself. The input matches the horizontal FOV when you see exactly half of the spheres on both edges of the screen.

For reference here is a table of default FOV values for common aspect ratios, and instructions on how to calculate actual FOV from a modified Arma3Profile.

/**************************************************************************
Script: CEEB_createSpheres.sqf

Description:
Creates sphere objects relative to an object's position, projected at given angle (centred about object's facing) over given distance. Used for testing horizontal FOV.

Version:
2014.05.25

Author(s):
- ceeeb (http://forums.bistudio.com/member.php?50952)

Input:
- argument: ARRAY
|		Index - Description
|		0 - (OBJECT) object to project from
|		1 - (NUMBER) angle in degrees to project spheres (expected horizontal FOV)
|		2 - (NUMBER) distance to cast spheres (one sphere every 5m)
|		3 - (NUMBER) time for spheres to exist before being removed

Output:
- returns: nil

Example:
[player, 90, 500, 5] execVM "sqf\CEEB_createSpheres.sqf"

**************************************************************************/

scriptName "CEEB_createSpheres.sqf";
_origin =  position (_this select 0);
_facing = direction (_this select 0);
_angle = _this select 1;
_number = ceil ((_this select 2) / 5);
_life = _this select 3;

_aziL = _facing - (_angle / 2);
_aziR = _facing + (_angle / 2);

for "_i" from 1 to _number do 
{
_temp = 'Sign_Sphere100cm_F' createVehicle [0,0,0];
_temp setpos [(_origin select 0) + (5 * _i * sin _aziL), (_origin select 1) + ( 5 * _i * cos _aziL), (_origin select 2)];
[_life, _temp] spawn {sleep (_this select 0); deleteVehicle (_this select 1)};
_temp = 'Sign_Sphere100cm_F' createVehicle [0,0,0];
_temp setpos [(_origin select 0) + (5 * _i * sin _aziR), (_origin select 1) + ( 5 * _i * cos _aziR), (_origin select 2)];
[_life, _temp] spawn {sleep (_this select 0); deleteVehicle (_this select 1)};
};

[rawalanche 13]

If you want to find out, CBA also contains a function that measures vertical FOV. Also, below is a script to check for yourself. The input matches the horizontal FOV when you see exactly half of the spheres on both edges of the screen.

For reference here is a table of default FOV values for common aspect ratios, and instructions on how to calculate actual FOV from a modified Arma3Profile.

/**************************************************************************
Script: CEEB_createSpheres.sqf

Description:
Creates sphere objects relative to an object's position, projected at given angle (centred about object's facing) over given distance. Used for testing horizontal FOV.

Version:
2014.05.25

Author(s):
- ceeeb (http://forums.bistudio.com/member.php?50952)

Input:
- argument: ARRAY
|		Index - Description
|		0 - (OBJECT) object to project from
|		1 - (NUMBER) angle in degrees to project spheres (expected horizontal FOV)
|		2 - (NUMBER) distance to cast spheres (one sphere every 5m)
|		3 - (NUMBER) time for spheres to exist before being removed

Output:
- returns: nil

Example:
[player, 90, 500, 5] execVM "sqf\CEEB_createSpheres.sqf"

**************************************************************************/

scriptName "CEEB_createSpheres.sqf";
_origin =  position (_this select 0);
_facing = direction (_this select 0);
_angle = _this select 1;
_number = ceil ((_this select 2) / 5);
_life = _this select 3;

_aziL = _facing - (_angle / 2);
_aziR = _facing + (_angle / 2);

for "_i" from 1 to _number do 
{
_temp = 'Sign_Sphere100cm_F' createVehicle [0,0,0];
_temp setpos [(_origin select 0) + (5 * _i * sin _aziL), (_origin select 1) + ( 5 * _i * cos _aziL), (_origin select 2)];
[_life, _temp] spawn {sleep (_this select 0); deleteVehicle (_this select 1)};
_temp = 'Sign_Sphere100cm_F' createVehicle [0,0,0];
_temp setpos [(_origin select 0) + (5 * _i * sin _aziR), (_origin select 1) + ( 5 * _i * cos _aziR), (_origin select 2)];
[_life, _temp] spawn {sleep (_this select 0); deleteVehicle (_this select 1)};
};

Yep, thanks. I am now quite happy about FoV i've set up, but i still think it should be right in the game menu, not burried deep in config file. Not only it would be easier to tweak, but it would also send clear message from BIS that changing FoV is okay.

See here: http://kotaku.com/far-cry-4-tricks-people-into-revealing-theyd-pirated-th-1660853492

Absence of in game FoV control should be used as a means of punishment, not as a standard state of game.

[Sandy* 10]

Unlike in "regular" games, I prefer Arma's standard FOV because one needs to see little details at a distance more often than have a huge field of view. Simulation of somehow realistic peripheral vision doesn't really work in game viewed with a normal monitor.

Reminds me of BF2's Project Reality - at ~200 meters, infantry was the size of a pixel or two, really hard to spot with the plain eye not to mention recognizing uniforms to define whether they were friendlies or hostiles. Scopes were a huge advantage at ranges were iron sights would've been ideal in real life. Thankfully Arma has the zoom function - having customizable FOV would of course hurt no one.

[Defunkt 431]

Unlike in "regular" games, I prefer Arma's standard FOV because one needs to see little details at a distance more often than have a huge field of view. Simulation of somehow realistic peripheral vision doesn't really work in game viewed with a normal monitor.

Yep, default FOV is merely a midpoint in a range bracketed by the ZoomIn and ZoomOut functions which collectively provide more realistic visual acuity. Comparisons with other 'shooters' aren't really that relevant (ArmA being more simulation than shooter).

[roshnak 41]

Comparisons with other 'shooters' aren't really that relevant (ArmA being more simulation than shooter).

Except that certain FOVs cause discomfort in some players. The OP specifically states that the default FOV is causing motion sickness.

[Defunkt 431]

Except that certain FOVs cause discomfort in some players. The OP specifically states that the default FOV is causing motion sickness.

Then he should change his FOV but that doesn't alter the reasoning behind why it's set the way it is by default or validate dubbing it a 'console FOV'.

[roshnak 41]

You didn't say that. You said that comparisons with other shooters aren't relevant. They are when you are comparing whether playing one shooter or another makes you feel sick.

As for the reasoning behind it, having the ability to set your FOV in the options wouldn't significantly compromise that reasoning, especially if the zoom-in and -out functions locked to specific FOVs.

Edit: Also, since FOV is apparently linked to aspect ratio, what may look fine on a 16:9 monitor might feel claustrophobic on a 16:10 monitor. This is likely to vary from individual to individual, which is a pretty good reason for including the ability to change FOV in the options.

Edited November 21, 2014 by roshnak