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# Recommended FOV

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Hello people :D In my engine, i have the objects scaled as one unit = one meter. I know the scaling is fine, but even tho the perspective doesn''t look that bad to me, the objects appear thinner than they should. So i would like to ask the question that has perhaps been brought up many times (but last time i checked, searching on the gamedev forums was disabled!): What FOV do you recommend for an FPS. This is in OpenGL, so i will be setting the yFov with gluPerspective. Also what do Quake games use? what do you guys prefer? I like the perspective in Quake 2, but some demos have a REALLY narrow fov which i find rather annoying, it feels like if you were 5'' in front of the camera.

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90 degrees is what pretty much everything uses.

~CGameProgrammer( );

PI/4 is standard

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i find 90 degrees a bit freaky. though it seems like QUake3 uses 90 (using cg_fov variable), when i use 90 for gluPerspective, its too.. weird. 45 seems nice and believeable. but is there a sweet value or shud it really be based on a certain magic formula?

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I think that 45 degrees (pi/4 in radians) is WAY TOO small...
In real life you certainly have bigger fov that 45 degrees!
90 degrees is fine , always

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Well there is a formula in the Red book I belive. But i'd just stick with PI/4 :-D

Actually we don't have much wider FOV than 45 Were preditory animals so we need a narrow FOV than say a Horse that has a FOV a little greater than 180.

[edited by - CallMeNeo8Ball on February 7, 2003 12:48:59 PM]

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its true 45 is far smaller than the humans natural FOV. but it doesnt feel like the perspective calculations in pc graphics follow that of the human eye. even looking at a 90 degree or even 120 degree FOV application makes u feel it odd. the distortion is just too noticeable to be normal. 45 could be somewhere near a nice value where it looks just ''right''.

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45 degrees seems very realistic. 90 degrees is too weired... :D

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Use 45 in gluPerspective, and it gives you a 90 degree view (45 left + 45 right). That''s standard. Although some games tweak it a bit depending on how it feels. 85 (42.5) is the default in Unreal Tournament 2003.

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for realism.
90degrees is good if your face is about 20cm away from the monitor
if youre sitting further away then the fov will need to be smaller

http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html

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60 degrees all the way!
also, it can depend on the size of your monitor, i think. There is something in parahelia cards with the multimonitor support, that you can set it to 180 degrees and it is supposed to look really good, because you have periferal vision.

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quote:
Original post by CraZeE
its true 45 is far smaller than the humans natural FOV. but it doesnt feel like the perspective calculations in pc graphics follow that of the human eye. even looking at a 90 degree or even 120 degree FOV application makes u feel it odd. the distortion is just too noticeable to be normal. 45 could be somewhere near a nice value where it looks just ''right''.

Do you have 2 EYES ?????
With 2 eyes you you have fov greater than 90 for sure...

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If you want the scene to look like it does in real life (perspective wise, of course, not the visual quality ), you have to calculate the FOV based on the physical size of the window and the distance between your eyer and the monitor. The vertical FOV is calculated as 2*arctan(height/(2*distance)), where height is the height of the window, and distance is the distance between the monitor and your eyes. This formula gives you the entire angle between the bottom and top clip plane, not half the angle. For me, a fullscreen window (19") would give me a FOV of about 35 degrees.

Small, yes, but think of it like this. Take a huge piece of paper/cardboard, cut a hole in it the size of the window you''re rendering to, hold it the same distance away from your eyes as the monitor is away from your eyes. Now walk around in the room and see for yourself how much you see throuh that hole. Not very much.

In real life you can generally "see" about 180 degrees, though you can''t see details very good even a few degrees away from the center, but you are also "surrounded" by the image we see. This is not the case with a monitor. A monitor occupies only a small part of our FOV.

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An accurate angle is good for realism, but most FPS users prefer at least 90 degrees - especially for multiplayer, where you need to see what's going on at the edges of the screen for a quick response.

[edited by - Waverider on February 7, 2003 3:26:14 PM]

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I think there is some confusion... a 45-degree FOV is zoomed in, not normal. However keep in mind that when someone says "90-degree FOV" they mean 45 degrees to the left and 45 degrees to the right.

~CGameProgrammer( );

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quote:
Original post by LockePick
Use 45 in gluPerspective, and it gives you a 90 degree view (45 left + 45 right).

Wrong. The fov parameter for gluPerspective() is the full angle in the yz-plane.

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So, everybody seems to recommend either 90 or 45, but with gluPerspective, we are talking about the Y fov..... Isn''t that like the vertical fov, so, are you people suggesting 90 for fov?

Here is a reference in case you don''t remember

void gluPerspective(GLdouble fovy,
GLdouble aspect,
GLdouble zNear,
GLdouble zFar)

fovy
Specifies the field of view angle, in degrees, in the y direction.

aspect
Specifies the aspect ratio that determines the field of view in the x direction. The aspect ratio is the ratio of x (width) to y (height).

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No, they mean rotated around the Y axis, which is the vertical one. It does not mean along it. Rotating around the Y axis is yaw (turning side to side).

~CGameProgrammer( );

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quote:
Original post by CGameProgrammer
No, they mean rotated around the Y axis, which is the vertical one.

Wrong. Again, the fov parameter for gluPerspective() is the full angle in the yz-plane (+y up, +z out of the screen), i.e., the vertical fov.

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OK i''m not speeking as an OpenGL programmer but as a Quake/Doom/Wolfenstein player!!!

90 for QUAKE3 and etc.
120 for QUAKE2

In my applications i use 90

The PAIN is coming...this summer!!!In cinemas everywhere.

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quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
[quote]Original post by CGameProgrammer
No, they mean rotated around the Y axis, which is the vertical one.

Wrong. Again, the fov parameter for gluPerspective() is the full angle in the yz-plane (+y up, +z out of the screen), i.e., the vertical fov.

No, that is pitch - rotating around the X axis. FOV is measured as yaw. The X-axis FOV is 3/4 of the Y-axis FOV because of the 4:3 ratio of width to height.

~CGameProgrammer( );

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"fovy Specifies the field of view angle, in degrees, in the y direction."

any questions? y direction is up/down NOT left/right. your fovy is 45, your aspect is 1.3333 and your fovx would be 60. read the rest of that (msdn), its made pretty clear.

and from here:
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~fleck/iowa-lab/wide.html

"The human field of view is about 180 degrees by 120 degrees"
read the rest to find out why you shouldnt set the fov like that ,-)

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quote:

The X-axis FOV is 3/4 of the Y-axis FOV because of the 4:3 ratio of width to height.

No it''s not.

FOVx != 3/4 * FOVyFOVx == arctan(3/4 * tan(FOVy))

Maybe I messed up FOVx and FOVy, but the idea is that the difference in horizontal and vertical angle is not the aspect ratio of the window. The difference in tangent of the angle is the aspec ratio.

And yeah, FOV in this case represents the half angle, the center to the edge, not edge to edge.