I have set mine to 70, that has no visible fishbowl effect, anything above does.
FOV: Fisheye Of View
- Thread starter ZombieF1
- Start date
I used to use 78 but at some point it reverted back to 60 (minimum on the in-game slider) & I've never bothered to change it again
I found fisheye distortion obvious on a 16:9 screen too (vertical distortion also) - with the FOV slider below significantly below maximum slider of 60 degrees (way below 70 degrees). Distortion seems worse in ED than some other games. I too mainly bought my 32:9 monitor for racing sims but I can enjoy any type of game more on it if it's implemented well enough. iRacing calculates correct FOV from view distance and distortion is not really an issue - especially if you split the screen into triple screens (SMP prevents a performance hit). Assetto Corsa Competizione also has a projection setting for curved monitors.
In-game slider hits minimum at 54.32 degrees it seems. Unfortunately, editing the settings.xml to make it lower has no effect - partly at least to prevent ship UI not all fitting on-screen. Please improve the FOV projection to help with spatial awareness. Distortion is huge in ED, even on 16:9. I know some would try throwing 32:9 under a bus, but 21:9 is common enough that that should be supported properly.
In-game slider hits minimum at 54.32 degrees it seems. Unfortunately, editing the settings.xml to make it lower has no effect - partly at least to prevent ship UI not all fitting on-screen. Please improve the FOV projection to help with spatial awareness. Distortion is huge in ED, even on 16:9. I know some would try throwing 32:9 under a bus, but 21:9 is common enough that that should be supported properly.
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Ideally it should be like 16:9 or 21:9 with some extra stuff at the sides. A wider letterbox than 16:9...
There are actually ways around this. Can people stop crapping on my thread and my monitor now please. Enough of the defeatist faux knowledge.
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I already said it's impossible to set FOV below the minimum 54 degrees. Editing the xml does nothing beyond the minimum. ED has exaggerated distortion problems. No FOV value can fix it yet. It's bearable on 16:9 - just - but it could be significantly better.
On a 16:9 panel I found distortion unbearable before maxing the slider. Even then seeing anything at the sides of the screen/rotating your ship (and soon to be legs on the ground) was somewhat unpleasant.
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Look, no noticeable distortion
View attachment 203394
Neither of these are anywhere near a 54 degree vertical FoV.
The bottom image is maybe 25-30 degree vertical and has a slight barrel distortion to compensate. The top image doesn't look like it's distorted, but appears to have an even smaller FoV.
How are you going to get a non-distorted view when you are trying to cram 54 vertical degrees into a much smaller portion of your actual FoV?
You either need to match the FoV of the view port to your actual vision, or distort the image in some other way.
Reducing stretch in high-FOV games using barrel distortion
Using a virtual camera with a large FOV can cause objectionable distortion near the screen’s edges. This article introduces a novel barrel distortion post effect that may be used to reduce stretch in this case. The effect can be controlled through multiple tweakable parameters, and requires only...
www.decarpentier.nl
Frontier is not going to introduce a barrel distortion effect. That would interfere with the rendering of lines and thus the ability to determine direction vectors, which is extremely important in a 6DoF game.
You might be able to use a 3rd party perspective filter to approximate what you're looking for, but it will make the image less accurate than default.
FoV is not just a simple value. ED is currently terrible at 6DoF anyway. Whatever, keep your crappy little game how it for all it matters. Fortunately I don't play it much anymore.
I've got a bit of time so I've just had a look at this. Not the fisheye distortion, that's a given but the ability to change the FOV. This is something I haven't mucked about with for years so it's worth checking to see if the behaviour has changed.
First, I found the file that the FOC is stored in, it's C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\Settings.xml.
If I move the slider in the game & click apply, opening that file shows the new value. Far left gives <FOV>54.350067</FOV> far right is 60.
If I edit the file (I changed it to 120 for the pic) & save, the game doesn't update but if I exit to desktop & re-enter the difference is obvious even from the 'ship in hanger' main menu screen, and the game reflects this new FOV too.
First, I found the file that the FOC is stored in, it's C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\Settings.xml.
If I move the slider in the game & click apply, opening that file shows the new value. Far left gives <FOV>54.350067</FOV> far right is 60.
If I edit the file (I changed it to 120 for the pic) & save, the game doesn't update but if I exit to desktop & re-enter the difference is obvious even from the 'ship in hanger' main menu screen, and the game reflects this new FOV too.
that cockpit is a bit cramped ...
Yeah I changed it back to 60, 120 was a bit much
Ideal values are betweeen 70 and 80. Even just 70 already makes a big difference, with almost no visible fisheye effect. I use 75. Could no longer play with 60, feel like I have horse blinders.
It was a bit...Yeah I changed it back to 60, 120 was a bit much
In this game, which uses straight up rectilinear projection, with no barrel distortion, it is.
You can adjust vertical FoV from just under 54 degrees to some comically useless limit that provides a ~178 degree horizontal FoV. You can't go smaller because, as you note, the HUD (which is a projection in the game world, not an overlay) won't be very usable.
If this is a 49" non-curved display, you'd have to sit 13" from the screen for everything to appear correct with a 54 degree vertical FoV. A curve will increase that distance slightly, but not by much.
Field of view calculator · andyf.me
The easiest way to calculate the mathematically accurate field of view (FoV) for your racing sim, no Flash required.
andyf.me
An artificial barrel distortion, or a different projection method, can reduce subjective distortion at the corners when sitting beyond optimal distance, but compromises the accuracy of lines, which is almost certainly why Frontier hasn't implemented it.
Distortion (optics) - Wikipedia
The game cannot look the way you want it to look without deliberately distorting the image.
Personally, anything beyond 60 degrees (the default max of the slider) is subjectively worse for me at the distance I like to sit (about 3) from my (32", 16:9) display.
Man this thread is a treat, Dunning vs. Kruger and it's head to head...
