Forum

What is a higher fov, an advantage or simply personal preference?

First some facts: Your actual fov is scaled based on your aspect ratio. You can get your real fov based on your fov_desired and aspect ratio here (not made by me, I found it on dropbox somewhere, can’t find it again.

If we consider fov to be an actual advantage, compare these 2 setups:
fov_desired 75, aspect ratio 5:4 (‘vanilla’ tf2): actual fov is 71.46°
fov_desired 90, aspect ratio 16:9 (typical competitive player): actual fov is 106.26°
That’s a whopping 34.8° difference! And this is excluding exotic setups with aspect ratios > 16:9. If you make the argument that fov is an actual advantage, can you please also argue that fov should not be scaled based on aspect ratio (or at least, capped based on real fov, not the prescaled value)? Assuming wider fovs give an actual advantage, you should go to the store to buy a fancy eyefinity setup right now!

However that is not how Valve sees it, they make a technical argument (sorry, no source for this, just hearsay, edit: valve wiki docs) where they incorporate the viewing area and distance to your screen (this is why console games typically have a much lower fov). Consult this graphic to understand the theory: http://i.imgur.com/88RqWYc.png

So how did Valve decide 90 was enough for everyone? Well, they computed how close you have to be to get a natural effect for a fov higher than 90. They decided that this was unrealistic. Besides the obvious mistake that some people simply enjoy a warped view this clearly indicates that Valve wants to give you a fov that feels natural for your setup. (which is by definition of personal preference).

That’s what I wanted to debunk, either you set the fov equal for everyone else for gameplay advantage reasons (this is not how it is now) OR you agree that fov is personal preference (Valve seems to agree here) and let is play with our warped view, because some people simply like it.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not a good excuse to start releasing a hack disguised as a ‘plugin’ :)

Quoted from Spike Himself

That’s all well and good, but it’s not a good excuse to start releasing a hack disguised as a ‘plugin’ :)

Yes, lets write Valve many nicely worded e-mails filled to the brim with feedback and twiddle our thumbs untill they do nothing again. It will be wonderous.

Quoted from kKaltUu

[…] both solutions are shit, unless Valve actually responds.

I would say Valve responded quicker to the OpenPlugin than they have to most feedback, the response isn’t ideal but when two parties start a conversation at different points it’s unlikely for them to meet right in the middle right away.

FoV’s are a personal preference until you start using plugins to remove the restriction that the game has set, then it’s a hack. I personally don’t mind an FoV up to 115-120 if Valve set the limit and I don’t need a 3rd party software.

Oculus Rift gives you fov_desired 110 degrees so Valve clearly don’t have an issue with that in terms of “oh, poor spies” game balance.

Quoted from fraac

I think this is correct. They made a design choice that says they don’t want their vistas warped. The personal preference is theirs. You probably need to relate to them on those terms for any movement to be made. Also I really suspect they dislike you tweaking their noses by finding all the clever loopholes. I can see them VACing for that at some point, when the root was an aesthetic difference.

I don’t think using this program is the same as using an unsigned plugin to help the game (being that it’s literally memory editing, and that is literally hacking) but I don’t get what people don’t understand about VAC not loading until you join a server.