Guild Wars 2

I’m having some pretty adverse affects to the game’s low FOV, mostly after boss fights when the FOV is very high, and it then drops back down to console FOV. I’m looking for a way to increase the FOV in some way, and I don’t give akittenhow.
Is anyone else experiencing this, or similar? Can we form some sort of petition to have this feature added?

I don’t know if there’s any way to truly increase the FOV beyond what’s already offered… but I do know that it might help to keep a bright light on in the room you’re sitting in. I end up feeling motion sick and nauseous if I try to play the game in a room that is not well-lit. Not sure if that would also help you at all, but it was worth mentioning…

There was also a suggestion in this post on Guru dealing specifically with FOV issues that might be of interest to you:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/59951-camera-control-issues-summed-up-for-you-reading-enjoyment/

I generally try to keep a lamp on to reduce eyestrain on long stints in the game. Thanks for the link, I’ll give it a look now.

Here’s an example of what FOV is before this discussion gets out of hand. Please see this animated picture before replying.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/Full_Metal_Racket/BC2/BC2-Fov.gif

Please note the player is standing in the same spot in each screenshot. He didn’t walk backwards.

90 is about normal for humans playing PC games.

Right now in game it feels like 60 something.

I too am hoping they will read the well written camera article. While I have felt only mild effects from GW2 it could be worse like the game Borderlands… ugg Couldn’t even play that longer than 10 minutes.

Besides the light you can check out.
http://www.alteredgamer.com/worst-pc-gaming/8149-can-video-games-make-you-ill/

Also look away from your computer when ever you can. I tend to look away when often when I have to run distances from A to B in 10 seconds or more.

Looking away in Orr is suicide, sadly.

This is the biggest thing for me right now – and the funny part is it’s so minor it’s not really an issue.

I dislike staring straight down at my character. The camera is a little off. The angle, not the FOV, is the problem for me. I don’t see the sky in this game. It’s a constant horizon at the top of my screen. To be able to tilt the camera upwards a little would be a big improvement for me.

Camera needs work and I’m sure it will come along. One of the big pluses I’ve seen with WoW was the camera pivoting when it touched the ground instead of sliding underneath the character as it does now. The camera kind of the only non-polished thing that sticks out in my mind right now. I’d like:

1) A further out zoom distance
2) Adjustable floating camera pivot (not sure why they added left/right adjustment and not up/down, lol)
3) Camera-Ground pivot so I can target up walls and so on without losing all position relationship

A note, though, so people understand: they only ‘load’ and only give you networking data for whatever is in front of you. This is kind of how they control lag. If you’re fighting in WvW attacking a tower, and the enemy is flanking behind you 100ft, you can turn right around and run at them and not see them for 10-15 seconds. Then the entire mob starts popping into view. Combined with the limited viewing options it can be very troublesome.

So if they adjust FOV like in the animated .gif I linked to, it won’t increase networking usage, they can keep the enemy thing just like it is now.

I agree. The fov is much to low. I have somewhat gotten used to it but I still do not like the tunnel vision. It also detracts from the wonder and scale of the game world.

Shadestrike.4372:

Moving in Orr is suicide, sadly.

Fixed.

But yeah, hate the camera/FoV in this game.

The FoV in this game is a little close. But that’s because (what I think) it’s designed around WvWvW. You’d have too much of an advantage to be able to see the entire battlefield. Looking over walls for secretly played siege equipment would be bothersome for many in there.

Low FOV has nothing to do with balance. If this was the case, FOV would not be an option in any game. It’s painful and requires a solution.

Stalzy.9548:

The FoV in this game is a little close. But that’s because (what I think) it’s designed around WvWvW. You’d have too much of an advantage to be able to see the entire battlefield. Looking over walls for secretly played siege equipment would be bothersome for many in there.

This is simply not true as GW2 has native support for 3Dsurround / Eyefinity and works fairly well, still not perfect I would love some fov (both vert and horizontal) and aspect controls etc to remove the stretching but anyway, I get a much higher fov using Eyefinity than if I’m not using it.
Can you spot the difference? :P (only thing changed between pushing PrtScn is resolution from 5940×1080 to 1920×1080)

1920×1080
5940×1080
this forum doesn’t allow images but direct links instead (imageshack hosted)

Notice the Asura gate is not clipped and I see much more using the higher resolution so if fov was fixed because of WvW then why would multi-screen users get higher fov and not just a distorted stretched screen?

I can see the difference. The difference is that I’m jealous in the second one.

The thing about FOV is that the default FOV with no distortion is limited by your aspect ratio. To crank up the FOV, you need to create a fisheye effect (distorting the image as it approaches the edges of the screen). In first-person this works because the camera is fixed on your character’s location and rotates on the spot, but in third-person the fisheye effect can actually be really disorienting. I’ve messed around with it in Tribes Ascend (the only game I personally know of with both an FOV setting and a third-person view) and the distortion is much more noticeable in third-person.

I’m not arguing against an FOV setting, I’m just saying I think there’s a reason it’s only a standard setting in first-person games. If it’s making you feel sick, there’s kind of a kludgey way to improve things: run the game in windowed mode and make the vertical window size narrower. The game will appear smaller but the FOV will be wider.

lorazcyk.8927:

Here’s an example of what FOV is before this discussion gets out of hand. Please see this animated picture before replying.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/Full_Metal_Racket/BC2/BC2-Fov.gif

Please note the player is standing in the same spot in each screenshot. He didn’t walk backwards.

90 is about normal for humans playing PC games.

Right now in game it feels like 60 something.

That was true in the Quake 3 days. It’s usually between 85 and 70 these days, because of widescreen monitors.

I can’t/won’t get techincal, all I know is that I kitten HATE the jumping puzzles in this game because the camera is FUBAR.

Fix it. Please.

Most people here apparently haven’t seen the .gif I linked to and have no clue what they’re talking about.

All I can say is, what the hell is FOV??

Eamil.7168:

If it’s making you feel sick, there’s kind of a kludgey way to improve things: run the game in windowed mode and make the vertical window size narrower. The game will appear smaller but the FOV will be wider.

This works to increase FOV and it’s what I have had to resort to. I’ve never gotten a sick feeling before from a game before this one. Doing this to increase the FOV is only way I can really play, and I hope they add an option for it. Anybody who says that they won’t do it because of PvP, you need to realize they already allow it with multimonitor setups.

This FOV ratio should really be changed and upped to 80/85 asap imo. I cant wait for the day for Anet to respond to the request of upping the FoV ratio.

Yep this is something that really needs looking at. Playing the game is making me feel massively claustrophobic and uncomfortable. It might also help to remove the torn paper style border around the screen.

I’d like to give this thread a slight bump, as I know a lot of players, including myself, are having issues during long play sessions comming from the camera turning delay and low FOV. Having options to turn off camera delay and increase FOV would be great.

Having a higher FOV also has the added benefit of being able to see more of the world than the ground next to you, and puts the work of Arenanet’s artists to greater use. Honestly I never get to see the sky unless I tilt my camera to the point where I can’t even see the ground any longer, the FOV is just that small.

Guimace.1739:

All I can say is, what the hell is FOV??

Field of view.

I hadn’t really thought about his, FoV doesn’t effect me a great deal in 3rd person games, but I was getting a few headaches the other day, I just attributed that to playing all day and being really tired as it was anyway.

I have used Flawless Widescreen (see link below) for a few other games, GW2 doesn’t appear to be supported at present, it may be in the future, i honestly don’t know how it works exactly, it’s a memory hack by the looks, so i can’t say if GW2 will be supported in the future or not, but worth keeping your eye on for sure.

https://www.flawlesswidescreen.org/index.php/Flawless_Widescreen

Also does anybody know what the default FoV is in GW2?

Guimace.1739:

All I can say is, what the hell is FOV??

Field of View,

It’s the degree at which you view the world from the cameras position, the higher the FoV, say 90 Degrees (my personal preference for PC games) you will see more out to the sides.

Being close to a screen while playing PC games with a low FoV can cause headaches and motion sickness to some people, for consoles it’s fine usually you’re far back from your TV, it’s not taking up so much of your own view.

I’m so glad I read this post, I thought I was the only one suffering. I’ve had massive headaches, I find myself leaning in to the screen, the jumping puzzles literally leave me feeling sick.

Just to bump this up and give a temporary solution, it’s not ideal but if you suffer from headaches and nausea from the narrow FoV like me then this will help.
Also before I start I only know how to explain how to do this if you have a nvidia graphics card, I don’t know if this works for ATI.

So the FoV in the game is calculated apparently on the ratio between the horizontal and vertical resolution, what I did was in the Nvidia Control Panel create a custom resolution. For example my native resolution is 1920 × 1080 so I decreased the vertical resolution to 800 for a custom resolution of 1920 × 800. You also want to make sure under ‘Adjust desktop size and position’ it’s set to ‘No scaling’. Finally run Guild Wars in Windowed Fullscreen setting in the in-game graphics menu. This will cause a letterbox effect like a movie but it will now have a more natural FoV.

If your native resolution isn’t 1920 × 1080 I would suggest decreasing the vertical amount by roughly 20%.

Also want to point out it’s irrelevant if the game is third person or first person, FoV is a fundamental aspect of games related to perspective and depth perception, you view the world through an imaginary camera regardless of first or third person . Saying the FoV is a ‘design choice’ for balance reasons or other explanations is a cop out too, FoV is such a basic point of games that can affect people so badly if done wrong, it shouldn’t even be an issue in the first place, the fact that it is smacks of incompetence.

Also want to point out it’s irrelevant if the game is third person or first person, FoV is a fundamental aspect of games related to perspective and depth perception

Thanks for the tip, I don’t think i’d want to try that honestly, i prefer the full screen.

When i mentioned it doesn’t affect me in 3rd person, I wasn’t suggesting FoV is somehow irrelevant depending on the view, it just affects me in a different way depending on the game.

Smitt.8602:

I agree. The fov is much to low. I have somewhat gotten used to it but I still do not like the tunnel vision. It also detracts from the wonder and scale of the game world.

I also agree…FOV needs more options for people.

Gorgazm.7805:

Thanks for the tip, I don’t think i’d want to try that honestly, i prefer the full screen.

When i mentioned it doesn’t affect me in 3rd person, I wasn’t suggesting FoV is somehow irrelevant depending on the view, it just affects me in a different way depending on the game.

Yeh it’s not going to affect everyone the same, just like motion sickness, car sickness, sea sickness. Some people will be fine and not notice it at all, for other it make the game almost unplayable. I really love the game and want to play it but before I figured out the solution I posted above I couldn’t play for more than 15 minutes or so at a time.

This is an excellent thread and I hope Anet’s can make a comment on this issue and hopefully fix it—they’ve created a brilliant game, but I think the FOV may be the game’s Achilles Heel. I have not been suffering headaches exactly, but I feel fatigued playing and find myself leaning into the screen and getting a stiff neck. I have a vague cramped feeling and now I know why.

I noticed one area where some ice elementals drop big ice spikes over your head. I play open-world stuff with rings disabled (they give me a weird puzzle-piecey graphical bug, so they’re ugly) and I kept getting hit by truckloads of damage.

I FINALLY tilted the camera way up and realized these big spikes were hovering over my head. However, I couldn’t watch the spikes and watch the mob at the same time, which made those fights much harder than they needed to be.

I’d simply love to be able to extend camera distance.

I did not experience similar issues with the game myself; I don’t understand how FOV can bother people so much to the point of having headaches, but I’ve experienced motion sickness by playing Minecraft, so I get these things can happen to anyone.

Lucky.3870:

I did not experience similar issues with the game myself; I don’t understand how FOV can bother people so much to the point of having headaches, but I’ve experienced motion sickness by playing Minecraft, so I get these things can happen to anyone.

Motion sickness is often due to a “disconnect” with what you are seeing and/or feeling compared to what the brain expects based on the “data” (i.e. sitting still while eyes believe you are moving) while headache often comes from strain, the strain in the case of FOV is because the eyes try to compensate the “tunnel vision” (which give some motion sickness) like feeling some people get, add to that post-processing which adds blur in an area where the eye expects no natural blur (a lot of people can reduce the headache but turning off stuff that blurs the graphics) you get discomfort and some get headaches.

A good FOV walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blZUao2jTGA

Hi, I started a thread very similar to this, about allowing 1rst person view and further camera zoom out.

Anyway, +1.

It’s a real problem when people are actually getting nauseous and have a bit of a claustrophobic feeling. Personally I need more space to feel comfortable.

And about that WvW looking-over-the-walls thing, easy fix, build higher wall models :P

Glad someone made a thread about this. I had been getting headaches and my eyes felt much more strained when I play GW2. I have stopped playing the game because one night I felt slightly dizzy and nauseous after a few hours of playing and I had a stiff neck the next day.

I definitely think this is from the narrow FOV, since I had never experienced anything like this in any other MMO I have played, or any other game for that matter. The camera problems definitely add to this as well. I have tried playing the game in a window and stretching the screen, but it wasn’t a big enough improvement to play for a long time.

I love the game, but sadly I think I have to wait till they increase the FOV and fix the camera before I start playing again.

Here are some links I found on various forums regarding people experiencing problems with the FOV-

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1176615-Field-of-view

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ymulp/first_game_to_make_me_yak_fov_cry/

http://angelsharks.wordpress.com/category/guild-wars-2-field-of-view/

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/41189-please-address-fov-and-scroll-out-issues-for-release-stress-test-still-left-me-feeling-nauseos/

http://www.guildwars2forum.com/threads/8453-Mouse-Smoothing-and-FOV-a-Serious-Gamer-s-Disappointment

http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/227336-field-of-view-fov/

I’m having issues with the FOV in this game too, after a few hours I get massive headaches and usually have to take a break. It is the biggest flaw in this game for me. Hope this can be fixed soon!!

I’m finding that with the low FoV/low zoom setting and the large number of people you sometimes get in a group event that it becomes very easy to accidentally unselect your current target. If i have to pan my camera around to look for hazards etc, if i click on anything at all whether it is somebody close or that space way off in the distance that looked empty but actually had a mob or critter it will retarget that,

When i have the option to zoom way out, i use a top down view. This usually gives me a better idea of distance and i can easily spot open areas that i can use to click to hold and pan around.

one of my friends cannot play the game because the fov makes him sick

fov is by far the worst thing in gw2

alot of my friends are getting sick because of the fov and they no longer want to play gw2 i really hope that they fix this

Never heard about this before, but hope you guys find a way to “fix” it and keep enjoying the game, i’d be in for a petition if needed!

Wow. I am really glad I found this thread. The night GW2 came out I got a headache and over the past 2 weeks have been to the ER twice with a couple of CT’s thrown in. Did not relate the game to the head problems. Will try the resolution change!

You just have to play the entire rest of the game camping the Shadow Behemoth in Godslost swamp area because when he’s up, your FOV and camera zoom become like GW1, very nice.

Some of the camera problems in this thread combined with the low FOV can make things worse I imagine-

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Camera-Related-Issues-Compilation-and-Lengthy-Anaylsis/first#post90266

Same problem, I get a headache every time I play because of the low FOV. Hopefully the option to change it will be added. It feels like 50 FOV or so.

I would like to see it changed, as well. I never get serious effects, however..i do notice that my eyes burn terribly while playing at times. I have never had an issue with other games. I fiddled with my brightness and everything i could think of, and it was never truely relieved.

I did n’ t have any headache but i knew there was something bothering me with the game’s camera.. something unusual. Reading this post i realized it is the FoV, BOTH VERTICAL and horizontal. I can only see a small portion of the horizon and if i want to admire the landscape i have to lower the camera.
It is the first game i use to turn camera up-down, left-right so intensively.

I’d like to add my voice to this discussion too. I’ve made a topic which has gotten a ton of replies, and even one from ArenaNet in the link in my signature.

Yeah, really hope they fix it or at least address the issue. It’s a little disappointing that nothing has been said about this matter.