In game Field of View is wrong and no one seems to care...

[George_Smiley 12]

A bold statement, yes?

 

Let me explain:

 

IN REAL LIFE FOV :

 

In real life when you look at an object directly in front of you  and then slowly look away from it

the object gets slightly smaller untill it is out of your FOV.

 

Or try this:

 

Look directly at an object and then try to observe a near object at the edge of your FOV.

Then look directly at it. It gets larger ish.  ( not, much much smaller ...)

 

IN GAME FOV :

 

If you do the above the game engine smears the object over the "flat"  frustum ( is that it ? ) 

and things on the edge of your FOV are HUGE. 

If you look at a small object in the middle of your screen then rotate  so it is at the edge

of your screen it now appears massive. 

 

An obvious argument for this weird visual aberation is that it reduces the complexity

of the users FOV : the edges are magnified so you  have less objects to draw.

Or the engineer who was making the vision system just didn't really know what they were

doing and went with the first thing that worked, and here we are now...

 

I use a 1920 by 1080 screen.  The ratio ( 1.9 to 1 ) is fine. The pixle density could be higher. For sure.

But the screen shape is good for me. 

When I jack the game FoV up the "edge smear" is wild. Especially with head tracking.

and the centre of the FOV is so CONCAVE it's not funny. 

 

And none of this is news either !

 

A QUESTION:

 

But I wonder. Will there be any advancement in this area?

 

From my little experience in game development ( almost none )  I have noted that

a few older game are based on DIrectX .  Arma and Rise Of Flight,  RC Desk Pilot etc

and they all "look the same".  They have the same DirectX hallmarks. 

Is Direct X the problem?

 

Also this:  Who signed off on the way we see the world through the ArmA lense?

( yes someone did OK it and they got paid to OK it, this is how it works...)

 

A POSSIBLE WORK AROUND/SOLUTION:

 

A possible solution to this issue is a SHADER that can be tweaked to produce a

"corrected" FOV.  If the game was to run with a large FOV and then the shader

tweaked the edges down so that when you look around the objects stayed mostly

the same size across most of the FOV...  

It's not like we don't have the CPU and GPU  power to do this now...

 

OK I am done.

 

Cheers!

 

George.

 

PS:

 

Another problem with the current FOV system is that objects very close to the "camera"

appear very large. In real life hold a pencil vertically in front of your eye, at say , 100mm

you can see past it. In game if you did this it would block your entire view. 

( which makes gunsights etc really really dumb... not like in the real world. ! )  :- )

In the "pencil test" use ONE EYE.  OK.  AND ... the back of the eyeball where the

light "sensors" are is curved. This is important to understand and does give us much

better FOV with less distortion... and our brain can work out the picture. Cool ay.

 

[George_Smiley 12]

See I told you no one cares ! 

[Janez 525]

I suppose for gunsights, rear post and furniture around it could have some degree of transparency to it, perhaps. Might look even weirder tho.

[George_Smiley 12]

On 10/3/2024 at 9:20 AM, Janez said:

I suppose for gunsights, rear post and furniture around it could have some degree of transparency to it, perhaps. Might look even weirder tho.

 

At the moment the way gunsights looks in A2OA is pretty whack, it's passable but...

 

The rifle ( lets say the m16 ) would look slightly tapered towards the edge of the screen

What it is right now is quite flared. 

 

Also the fricking "auto zoom" when  you right mouse click is terrible. Which is to get

around the concave distortion problem. 

With objects being of equal size from the centre of the screen to the edge of the screen

object size recognition would be enhanced.

Example: if you look at an object at your "edge of screen" and then look at it directly it

should not "change size"...

 

I use head tracking and I can just see down the red dot sight ( but it's right up against the edge of the screen)

and it looks fine.  With a decent corrected view and no "auto zoom"  things might look way better, especially on a

bigger screen.

 

With a much bigger FOV the way things grow at the edges is quite sickeneing... especially with head tracking.

I used to use 1 by 1.9 but wow does that want to make me chunder...

 

Does Reforger zoom in the picture a bit when looking down the sights? I can't remember...

 

George.

 

PS I would post screen shots to show you what I mean but... 

 

So this discussion  forked now: 1) The concave fish eye FOV and  2)  the weird zoom in when using the sights. ( I always hated that... )

 

I blame Microsoft for this. I am sure BI did not design the opitcals behind the game. That I think it DirectX... ( I could be wrong there...)

 

[Janez 525]

5 hours ago, George_Smiley said:

At the moment the way gunsights looks in A2OA is pretty whack, it's passable but...

I imagine it's mostly the same in Arma 3? I haven't played in a while.

[George_Smiley 12]

7 hours ago, Janez said:

I imagine it's mostly the same in Arma 3? I haven't played in a while.

 

I should say so. Why change now ? Must take another look.

 

I did some testing yesterday and took screen shots in A2OA. I will do the same in Arma and Reforger to see if anything has changed. 

 

For what it is worth A2OA could be really good if it was fixed up.

The random LoD distances for objects etc. ( the worst offenders are things that you can see a looong way off ...)

The weird zoom in when you look through a sight...

Loads of things that add up to a bit of a mess really. But they are sooooo fixable. 

The LoD distance of grass, when flying low in a heli, could be increased, so it is not "growing" as you fly along.

 

Attention to detail is a biggie. 

 

After all is said and done I do like the Chernarus map.  Though I would like a built up area map too. Taviana is pretty good.

The city is pretty cool and the mountains... Must get that map soon.

 

Have a nice day !

 

George.

 

 

[dalber24 138]

On 10/1/2024 at 5:12 PM, George_Smiley said:

IN REAL LIFE FOV :

 

In real life when you look at an object directly in front of you  and then slowly look away from it

the object gets slightly smaller untill it is out of your FOV

In reality this is not the case, at least I don't see things that way, in fact I see them the same size, and I don't have any vision problems, in fact the last eye exam showed that I have 20/20 vision so my eye health is perfect.

 So having said that, in the game depending on the configuration, fov, aspect ratio, etc, etc. Yes, there is that weird thing where you see objects on the sides deform, change size, become wider.

But it is corrected a bit by making a custom fov configuration.

I had some very good values for 1080p, 1440p and 2160p, but I can't find the damn file where I wrote it down... Currently I have a rather strange fov that is actually noticeable in the video, because I momentarily changed the video resolution and aspect ratio to record the video I posted in your other thread, my current fov setting is because I was using it with my Oculus Rift.

Edit: forgot mention...

The ArmA 2 profile configuration file for custom FOV [your_profile_name].Arma2Profile
Default location of the file %userprofile%\Documents\Arma 2 - Other Profiles\[your_profile_name]
(Once you have modified the FOV and saved the changes, you must write-protect the file, right click and click on read only)

I currently have this, but as I mentioned before, this one works fine in VR but you can try it and see how it is.
fovTop=1.30;
fovLeft=1.73;

For 1920 you can try
fovTop=1.03;
fovLeft=1.83;

[George_Smiley 12]

13 hours ago, dalber24 said:

In reality this is not the case, at least I don't see things that way, in fact I see them the same size, and I don't have any vision problems, in fact the last eye exam showed that I have 20/20 vision so my eye health is perfect.

 So having said that, in the game depending on the configuration, fov, aspect ratio, etc, etc. Yes, there is that weird thing where you see objects on the sides deform, change size, become wider.

But it is corrected a bit by making a custom fov configuration.

I had some very good values for 1080p, 1440p and 2160p, but I can't find the damn file where I wrote it down... Currently I have a rather strange fov that is actually noticeable in the video, because I momentarily changed the video resolution and aspect ratio to record the video I posted in your other thread, my current fov setting is because I was using it with my Oculus Rift.

Edit: forgot mention...

The ArmA 2 profile configuration file for custom FOV [your_profile_name].Arma2Profile
Default location of the file %userprofile%\Documents\Arma 2 - Other Profiles\[your_profile_name]
(Once you have modified the FOV and saved the changes, you must write-protect the file, right click and click on read only)

I currently have this, but as I mentioned before, this one works fine in VR but you can try it and see how it is.
fovTop=1.30;
fovLeft=1.73;

For 1920 you can try
fovTop=1.03;
fovLeft=1.83;

 

Nice.

 

The in real life  eyeballing  of things.... to me objects get slightly smaller at the edge of my FOV. 

I notice it, I have very good visual  measuring skill... it maybe a blurry image but I can tell it's smaller

or larger etc. From doing things like picking out different size drill bits etc.  I did a test a while back

to check things like that and got a high mark. So yeah,  to me things get slightly smaller at the edges.

 

The "deformation" at the edges is reduced significantly when your FOV narrows. ( it is not "corrected"...)

This means you are looking through a key hole and your peripheral vision is almost zero.

The deformation is still there. I could explain why with a white board....

 

I have used 1 by 1.9  FOV with a mouse and this is ok ( the centre is tiny though...) but with

head tracking and sweeping your FOV around... it's awful. Bad. Not ok. 

It's the opposite of a fish eye lense.

With a fish eye the edges get  more compressed until the image is

a round circle with a 360 sky.   ArmA does the opposite, it expands the edges....  and pushes out the middle

till is looks like it's miles away. It's all wrong. But hey... engineers who thought they were doing

it right....

 

At the moment I am using the vanila FOV and looking waaaay round. It's

not optimal but it works for checking flanks etc.  1920x1080 ...

 

On that note I think this:

Zooming to check things is not cool.  It's the same in most "games".  you can look at things in the

distance with zoom that you would not be able to see properly without zoom.  Zoom is similar

to using binox. and if you have have binox then good. So in my ideal game there is no zoom in.

You want to look far ? Get binox.  That's it. and no "adjusting FOV" in game. That's whack.

 

I think there is a "fish eye" setting in reshade, but it only effects the FOV you can see. so

it can't give you back your edges....

 

If the way the game camera works could be tweaked. WOW.

That would be crazy. 

Essentially compress the edges a tad so that when you sweep your fov over an object

it stays the same from the centre to the edge, with a decent FOV.  AND things like butt

stocks etc are not HUGE at the edge of FOV. 

It's truly is simple. Some mathematics some place buried in the code. 

It would increase the image complexity and CPU load etc ,

but new machines should be able to handle it.

 

George.

 

 

 

[dalber24 138]

@George_Smiley if you feel the need to change the way it looks you can do it with reshade, I have used reshade with 1 filter to correct how some old games look when put in VR, the filter is called
Polynomial Barrel Distortion P, it is for VR, but maybe it will be useful for you, because it is very customizable.

In the Stereoscopic options you select monoscopic since you use a monitor, and well the rest you start playing with the values to adjust it to your liking

[George_Smiley 12]

21 hours ago, dalber24 said:

@George_Smiley if you feel the need to change the way it looks you can do it with reshade, I have used reshade with 1 filter to correct how some old games look when put in VR, the filter is called
Polynomial Barrel Distortion P, it is for VR, but maybe it will be useful for you, because it is very customizable.

In the Stereoscopic options you select monoscopic since you use a monitor, and well the rest you start playing with the values to adjust it to your liking

 

Yeah I think I tried that a while back but it starts at the edge, I think and you get " corners " in the FOV corners.

I'm in game right now trying out the FOV numbers again. It does not correct the "fat edge" distortion but I

trying to get something I like. 

I think if I can just see the top of my boot in the Little Bird, it's as good as it's going to get.

Will try that reshade shader again. Maybe I was doing it wrong back then...

If only I could drag a drop pictures here... darn it.

 

George.

 

PS.

 

What shader package are you using...  ???

 

I tried Fubax shaders and got the "perfect perspective" fish eye, which actually does show you just how

bad the ArmA vision really is. But playing with it would be no ideal. It only works vertically...

AND it reduces the canvas smaller that the screen so you get a "boarder"....

 

I didn't DL all the available shaders to save data...

 

OK later.... Polynomial_Barrel_Distortion_for_HMDs   

It's  not using the entire screen... so I get the boarder effect. 

Does look ok, not quite aggressive enough.