Guild Wars 2

Hello all!

A lot of people have brought up the issue that the vertical FoV seems alright with 4:3 aspect ratio. I made a lot of tests with different resolutions/aspect ratios and I can only say, YES, it’s true.

Here’s a screenshot comparison taken with max zoom:
4:3 (custom resolution 1920×1440) – the lion’s head is clearly visible
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw598.jpg
16:9 (my default resolution 2560×1440) – the lion’s head is cut at the eyes
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw597.jpg

But not only that, a fellow reddit poster, Boojum, has more to backup this claim. You could say he reverse engineered the FoV values. The method he used is not completely accurate but we’re not interested in +/- 5°.

Here’s the link:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/118t3a/fov_is_anets_math_bugged/

So what he found out is not only that the vertical FoV isn’t 75° with 16:10 aspect ratios but that the vertical FoV is even a lot smaller than expected. 44°! (And you wonder why you have tunnel vision)
With that knowledge we can also say that the vertical FoV isn’t 75° in 16:9 either.

At this point someone has to do the math but I believe the intended FoV is only correct in 4:3 aspect ratios!

So my sincerest apology for bringing up yet another FoV thread but this time it’s not about a slider or some opinion. It’s FACT and a really nasty bug!

I hope this post reaches a developer who can take a look at this issue.
Thank you!

Worth noting that the apparent horizontal FoV is 65°. Last official word was that the FoV was 75°, but before that the number of 65 was common, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it actually is 65 and the developer in question made a mistake.

Either way, it seems like something worth checking out. If it’s a bug , that would explain some of the complaints about dizzy-makingly small FoV. I’d personally appreciate a FoV slider, but if part of the issue is caused by a bug, that’s another issue entirely.

Recently even some of my fellow players that previously had nothing against the narrow field of view started to complain more often about it, usually due to inability to see what’s going on in WvW (for example there’s no chance to win against a Thief other than luck, as for most of the time this class appears to be beyond warring player’s point of view).

This is a ticking bomb waiting to go off that’s not only killing some of PVE enjoyment (world seems small, flat, tight), but also removing (yes!) any class balance and environmental awareness from PVP.

FOV slider is a must. It’s been an issue since the first BWE, there are tons of people complaining, it’s easy to fix, does NOT change balance at all (3 screen setups, playing windowed allows to bypass the default FOV).

Please, ArenaNet, hear our cries.

It just seems like nothing is going to be done about this issue. I guess ANet could be too worried about performance of the game while it is CPU bound. However, given the option, I’m sure most people would increase the FOV regardless of the FPS impact.

It seems like at least in full-screen, the horizontal FoV always stays as a certain value (lets say 75).
Math (simple trigonometry from the “eye” to the projected screen):
v_fov = atan(tan(h_fov / 2) / aspect_ratio) * 2
4:3 – v_fov = atan(tan(75 / 2) / (4 / 3)) * 2 = 60
16:9 – v_fov = atan(tan(75 / 2) / (16 / 9)) * 2 = 46

This seems to work differently in windowed mode (and in 3 monitor setup), where squishing the vertical axis actually increases the h_fov without breaking the v_fov.

This is counter intuitive and punishes people with wider monitors.

Today I’ve played the Planetside 2 beta and they have a slider for “vertical fov” from 45 to 75. While that seems low numbers, the math translates it like this:
h_fov = atan(tan(v_fov / 2) * aspect_ratio) * 2
4:3 – h_fov = atan(tan(75 / 2) * (4 / 3)) * 2 = 91
16:9 – h_fov = atan(tan(75 / 2) * (16 / 9)) * 2 = 107
Which are totally reasonable numbers.

If anything is supposed to be constant, it should be the vertical FOV. People with wider screens should see the same vertically, but more horizontally.

I don’t think its about full-screen vs. window. It’s only about aspect ratios. It’s really odd, though.

The wider your screen/window/viewport, the smaller your vertical FoV until a certain threshold is reached. This happens somewhere between 4:3 (= 16:12) and 16:10. From then on, only your horizontal FoV increases. Your vertical FoV stays small.

So with a 5:4 or 4:3 ratio, you can see stuff in front of you. With 16:10, 16:9, and 16:3 (three widescreen monitors), you cannot see stuff in front of you. WTF?

I wonder how anyone would come up with such a counter-intuitive system. It has to be a bug.

Why was this moved to the tech support section? I don’t need support, I’m posting a bug! -.-

Moderators, please move this thread to the Game Bugs sub-forum.

I think I’ve figured it out.
There are a set of minimum FOVs, however these minimums are very low.
And these minimums are always chosen.
It seems like the values are somewhere close to this:
Min v_fov = 45
Min h_fov = 75

The game then chooses the FOV based on not going below the minimum:
4 × 3
h_fov = 75 (min)
v_fov = 60

16 × 9
h_fov = 75 (min)
v_fov = 46.6

100 × 5 (squished wide)
h_fov = 166
v_fov = 45 (min)

5 × 100 (squished tall)
h_fov = 75 (min)
v_fov = 172

This explains why squishing the screen still increases the FoV in the selected axis.

If my calculations are correct,
setting it to an 1×1 aspect ratio will actually give 75 h_fov and 75 v_fov which is actually fine!

Interesting, and I definitely think that your min v_fov assumption is correct.

But as you can see in the following screenshots, there doesn’t seem to be a min h_fov. When narrowing the window, the v_fov is increasing, while the h_fov is still decreasing.

I’ve highlighted reference points at the top, left, and right of the image to clarify the effect.

http://imgur.com/a/T9uVL#0

This can’t be intended and might me related to the bug that wide screens get a lower v_fov in the first place.

Sincerely I just don’t get why devs just doesn’t admit that there is definitely something wrong with the zoom or fov in this game and fix it. They talk about “position awareness”, not “changing the art” and some other nonsense as the reason to not fix this issue.

At the end the only real solution if you don’t want to get the infamous tunnel vision due to this ridiculous fov is playing on 3 monitors. Sorry for going off-topic but every time i see a post related to this issue it takes off my nerves.

The bigger question is, why was this thread buried in the tech support? Moderators were quite quick in moving the thread. No response or action since.

My question is that, why is your HUD missing from second screen. Your screen shots to me clearly spam TROLL. Sorry but it just looks like you cropped the picture. FOV bug or not HUD should be displayed. Seeing no HUD also seems even more like you just cropped it to cut the lions head off.

Then look at my screenshots with HUD if you don’t believe him. http://imgur.com/a/T9uVL#0

Or you could just read about it in the Reddit thread. It’s not like there aren’t enough sources to back his claims…

I think this is covered by “We Dont Care, dont like it, to bad, we got your money”

Im sorry but this really bothers me, I have 3 old friend who got the game with me who cant play due to FOV sickness, they all get headaches or motion sickness or both after less then 30minutes in game…..

they tried the camara tool and found it fixed the problem for them but they all refuse to use it because they dont want their accounts banned for hacking…..

from the BS statement the dev made a while back, I really get the impression that they just dont care about those who are effected by the fov issues and have no intention of fixing them.

Also, I really doubt its about the art, I think its because with wider fov and ability to see how amazing the world looks(rather then just how the ground looks) people wouldnt feel like the zones where as big…..

that said, I really doubt they will fix this, because, as I said the have our money and they have some weird vision of how their game should look…..some vision thats harmed by an fov slider but isnt effected by quality settings that can make the game look like it was made in the 90’s……

Jangogigalo.5320:

My question is that, why is your HUD missing from second screen. Your screen shots to me clearly spam TROLL. Sorry but it just looks like you cropped the picture. FOV bug or not HUD should be displayed. Seeing no HUD also seems even more like you just cropped it to cut the lions head off.

I hope this clears your doubts. I’ve taken the same scene, this time both with the UI.

- 16:9 -
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw599.jpg
- 4:3 -
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw600.jpg

In summary,
We can get nice vertical fov when making the window square or thinner, but with low horizontal fov and unused screen space on the sides.
We can get nice horizontal fov when making the window very wide and squished, but with low vertical fov and unused screen space above and below.
Why can’t we get both a high vertical fov and a high horizontal fov, on the full screen?!

I don’t get dizzy like some people report, but a lot of the time I can’t see the world in front of me. Such a beautiful gameworld that I just don’t get to look at.

SoulBurn.7596:

In summary,
We can get nice vertical fov when making the window square or thinner, but with low horizontal fov and unused screen space on the sides.
We can get nice horizontal fov when making the window very wide and squished, but with low vertical fov and unused screen space above and below.
Why can’t we get both a high vertical fov and a high horizontal fov, on the full screen?!

because,
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/238836-camera-and-fov-field-of-view/

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

3) gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.

I read this as

1) our game is already very poorly optimized and we fear that people barely able to play now will open the slider up and be unable to play.

2) our artistic vision has you staring at the ground so you wont start to think the zones arent all that large, also we decided on this fov and dont want to change it.

3) we decided that our current fov is best for everybody and we arent going to change that, even if it makes people physically ill, we know whats best for everybody.

sorry but, these are the facts, the dev in charge of this is dead set that hes correct and thats all that matters

personally, having seen the results from the camaratool, and having a few friends who get fov sickness(headakes/stomic distress/exct) I think its mostly about ego, not trying to insult john or the other devs, please dont assume that I am, we all have our ego’s and sometimes we dont even realise whats why we are doing things, I honestly feel that this is one of those situations, the people involved dont suffer these effects for whatever reasons, be it them using 4:3 or similar aspect ratio monitors or them using smaller screens where the small fov isnt an issue(laptops mostly)……they cant see there is a problem because it dosnt effect them, also people demanding/asking for these changes gos against their pre-determined decision that the current(Bugged) fov is perfect.

of all the arguements/reasons he made, 2 is the one i could understand if they allowed over 100fov, fisheye at100fov is very minor and on a large screen it wouldnt be an issue since peripheral vision is blurry anyway….but it helps you not feel sick/closed in…..

oh well, I doubt they will listen to us…..but I do hope that they decide to….

you may want to post this info on the bug tracker or at gw2guru if its not there.

He says “the FoV is 75”. He didn’t say if it is vertical, horizontal or diagonal.
From our experiments, it can’t be either horizontal or vertical since we saw either of these changing.
If this diagonal FoV, it explains the anomaly with wide screens. However, 75 degrees of diagonal FoV is extremely narrow, giving just 65×36 degrees on 16:9 or 60×45 on 4:3.

Regardless, none of the “art” aspects are relevant since we can get the higher FoVs by squishing the window wide or tall, both are allowed.
Combined, we can theoretically make a cross of high FoV, missing just the corners.
This is proof the art is OK in these FoV, performance is different per computer. On the multiplayer aspect there is a large advantage for people who don’t get dizzy/sick from this FoV.

you need no more proof then the screenshots posted from users of that tool that show 85/95/100 (ranges in there) fov’s, above 100 I could see the fish eye effect, but at 100 and lower, i didnt see any ill effects, infact, i thought the game looked alot better…

I guessing its just a rooster up that they need to fix, but i doubt they will admit that…..as they are happy with how the game looks and feels…..

I like gw2, i just hate having to run it at a custom res to get it to not feel like im playing with blinders on.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

you need no more proof then the screenshots posted from users of that tool that show 85/95/100 (ranges in there) fov’s, above 100 I could see the fish eye effect, but at 100 and lower, i didnt see any ill effects, infact, i thought the game looked alot better…

I guessing its just a rooster up that they need to fix, but i doubt they will admit that…..as they are happy with how the game looks and feels…..

I like gw2, i just hate having to run it at a custom res to get it to not feel like im playing with blinders on.

Thats the problem and the reason why FoV became a much bigger issue than it was.

It’s not just the fact that the FoV in this game is terrible, but also because the reasons for NOT giving us the ability to change them were pure nonsense and completely inconsistent with what we know about this game and the FoV.

The FoV is bad, it CAN be fixed, quite easily in fact(because a simple 3rd party mod already does that) but they just don’t want to admit that they screwed up, so we need to continue to suffer so that ANET can save some face, and the devs can preserve their pride.

Exactly, only this time it’s not that we want a higher FoV of 75°. It’s, fix your calculations on aspect ratios that are different to 4:3 so we can get at LEAST the intended FoV.

When this is done, the discussion about the too low FoV can continue.

At this point I hope that at least one developer read this and took an honest look at this issue.

And again a big thank you to the moderator who moved this thread. You surely know how to handle bug reports!

Oh god thanks, then it IS bugged!!!
Thank you for your findings, and let’s hope they will adjust this soon.

submit the bug to the bugtracker on the gw2guru forums if you can….since they seem to respond to such posts/reports over there but not here.

Welp, looks like I’m playing windowed 4:3 from now until anet fixes the FOV

so till the servers go offline?

I think i got it. They simply don’t have any screens that are higher than 4:3 aspect ratio and can’t repeat the problem.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

so till the servers go offline?

I’m not a specialist, but as far as I see GW2 is losing players and (from my experience) my mates stopped playing mostly because the game doesn’t feel fun, aka “you can’t see what’s going on”. I might sound like a broken record, I know. Now, when the new WOW expansion came out there is significant amount of players who notices that in direct comparison GW2 camera shows players nothing but a ground and some of their character’s back. And it really hits you hard. I’d expect them to include a FOV slider very soon.

@Jazhara Knightmage: I tried, but it seems that the bug tracker is just an automated script that reads every thread in the official forum that was posted in the bug section and has a developer response.

I’d have to repost the same thread in the bug section but I guess it’ll be moved again. -.-

Would love to see an official response to this.

i too would like to know this using my LCD tv as monitor (32 inch) 1824×1096 resolution (requires tweaking because of native overscan of tv for some reason) widescreen aspect (does there exist an lcd that isnt these days? ) i feel claustrophobic most of the time, i tried wvwvw a few times and i found that its a pain in the butt trying to see things above walls or keeps because the camera sticks to your back and you can barely see anything

after watching a few videos and playing with the rezised window, i can honestly say that the game is 100 percent better looking like that, i would love to know if this is a bug of the intended FOV for 16.9 monitor users

No Anet response? =D COME ON!

Enzi.5496:

Jangogigalo.5320:

My question is that, why is your HUD missing from second screen. Your screen shots to me clearly spam TROLL. Sorry but it just looks like you cropped the picture. FOV bug or not HUD should be displayed. Seeing no HUD also seems even more like you just cropped it to cut the lions head off.

I hope this clears your doubts. I’ve taken the same scene, this time both with the UI.

- 16:9 -
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw599.jpg
- 4:3 -
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35298245/gw600.jpg

PERFECT EXAMPLE

Please try to get this to some bug technicians…

I switched to windowed mode a few weeks ago because it allows for wider horizontal fov.
I just tested it again: when i reduce vertical size of the window, vertical fov is reduced slightly and horizontal fov becomes significantly wider. That’s relative to 1920*1080.

Scaling the window to ~4*3 ratio, vertical fov increases, and horizontal fov is reduced a lot (again relative to 1920*1080).
Indeed it looks like fov does not stick to a certain minimum value, and on wide screens vertical fov is easily ~10 degrees less than what Anet says the fov is.

Aside from looking up walls in WvW, i prefer wider horizontal fov because it helps more with situational awareness.

Shion.8059:

Sincerely I just don’t get why devs just doesn’t admit that there is definitely something wrong with the zoom or fov in this game and fix it. They talk about “position awareness”, not “changing the art” and some other nonsense as the reason to not fix this issue.

At the end the only real solution if you don’t want to get the infamous tunnel vision due to this ridiculous fov is playing on 3 monitors. Sorry for going off-topic but every time i see a post related to this issue it takes off my nerves.

yes switching to 3 monitors is a way to fix the horizontal fov but not even 6 monitors fixes the vertical fov.

6 monitors helps the vertical fov but it doesn’t solve it you still feel squished vertically but fine horizontally.

and i’ve had to stop playing the last week due to headaches when i play.

some more test with custom resolutions to show how buggy it is

http://imgur.com/a/Jcn1E

and how it works instead on 3 displays at 1920*1200 each (not mine)
http://i.imgur.com/DLcin.jpg

I think simply being able to scroll out the camera farther would work to fix most peoples issues ( I know it would mine ). In other MMO’s you could do this via console commands quite easily.

It’s a sad fact that I spent an hour researching how I could hack the engine into a better FOV or longer camera distance during the 1st BWE.

Some kind of acknowledgement in the current AMA on Reddit. Incredible. (Don’t miss the top-voted response.)

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa/c6nuoo1

made some new test and comparison at
- 1200×1200 (1:1)
- 1600×1200 (4:3)
- 1920×1200 (16:10)
http://imgur.com/a/jL3Mj

it is a work in progress

MrNobody.4357:

made some new test and comparison at
- 1200×1200 (1:1)
- 1600×1200 (4:3)
- 1920×1200 (16:10)
http://imgur.com/a/jL3Mj

it is a work in progress

Thank you for this!

Thank you very much, this without a doubt shows the problem quite clearly!

ANET, I know you are getting a team to “investigate this” on Monday, but please, hurry up, and for the love of science please, please, please don’t let the whole “we are getting a whole team assigned to investigate this issue” to not be just some nonsense PR drivel that you did on Reddit to make it look like you’ve put some effort in to the horrible FoV and decided that its all OK and nothing is wrong. PLEASE don’t let this be the case.