To heighten your experience when engaging in the virtual world, you need to recognize the importance of your field of vision (FOV). When you are in a simulated race, you want to have a visual experience that replicates driving an actual car. The FOV offers you the chance to have a real-life experience while playing your virtual game. Often overlooked, the FOV is crucial to initiating a real-life experience.
The field of view is how you navigate through the virtual world. When you set your FOV, you are determining the width of your perspective. Once the FOV is set, you don’t need to make any adjustments, even if you switch the car you are driving or the track you are on.
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What to Consider When Determining FOV
Your field of view represents your entire vision of the virtual world you are exploring. The measurement of this angle is from left to right on your screen and should be large and resemble a fish-eye lens.
There is also a benefit to considering a smaller FOV when experiencing more trivial changes in your virtual car’s balance. For example, when you have a larger field of vision, you can take a turn and adjust the angle as you come upon the corner and adjust it on a broader spectrum. With a smaller field of vision, you will make minuscule changes to slight wheel movements to correct the turn.
What is FOV
When you first start playing a game, you may be content with the FOV, and you may not even be aware that you can change it. There is a setting that enables you to readjust the portion of the in-game world you can see before you. Since the perspectives that the game comes with at the initial start-up of the game aren’t optimal, you will want to go in and change it to suit your setup.
The correct field of vision setting for any simulated racing game is reliant on two things:
- The screen size that you are playing on
- How far you will be sitting away from the screen when you are playing
The two deciding factors noted above, create the optimal FOV setting for any game and, your settings should rely upon these two elements.
You can base your FOV on a higher scale that allows you to see the other racing cars near you. Having a higher FOV also makes it easier to determine your speed but will likely mean that your screen fills with the interior of the vehicle, which will make it harder to judge distance.
Optimizing Your FOV has Advantages
There are benefits to optimizing your field of vision when participating in Sim Racing.
Increased Realism
Changing your sim racing FOV may have been something you were unaware of, so you may have been happy with the standard field of vision that your game came with initially. When you do not have an adjusted FOV specific to your gaming space and equipment, you are not getting the heightened experience of realism.
If you are going to invest in the world of sim racing, you want to have the best and most realistic experience. Your equipment will help get you the best experience, but the FOV is essential for optimal realism and gameplay, especially if you are using a VR headset.
Distance Awareness
When your FOV is calibrated properly, not only will the realism become greater but, it will help improve your game playability. With a proper field of vision, you can judge the distance between you and other racers and obstacles better. Spatial distance is helpful if you are beginning your sim gameplay and are having difficulty navigating the track.
When your field of vision is adjusted, you can determine distances more accurately and judge such things as corners and handle them without having your car spin offside.
You will also be able to judge your speed more accurately because no G-force is involved. When you can determine your speed, you will handle your car better and have more control over your driving.
A small change in the FOV can cause a great deal of improvement to your driving. You may need to readjust your FOV a couple of times to figure out your best field of vision.
How to Calculate Your FOV
Switching your sim racing FOV is going to improve your gameplay more than you may realize. If you’re not sure how to make these changes, we’ve explained the process below. First, you need to know that there are two different aspects to your FOV: horizontal and vertical.
Horizontal FOV
Horizontal FOV covers the distance to the sides (left and right) that you can see at any given time. In our actual lives, we have a horizontal vision of around 180 degrees, but we don’t register the entire space in our vision; we only have about 115 degrees of the effective field of vision, with a smaller awareness of 5 degrees being what we can register.
Vertical FOV
There is also a vertical aspect to a person’s field of vision with a smaller range of only 5 – 55 degrees of what we see. There is a difference between being able to see what is around us and being able to identify the objects.
When you bring the two FOVs together in sim racing, you can see the visual spectrum that we see in real life. Very little of the FOV is fully comprehended, even in real life, but when the two are brought together, it makes a much clearer image of the things around us, including virtual play.
How to Calculate FOV
Not everyone is going to use the same calculations for setting up their FOV for sim racing because everyone has a different setup. It’s important to calculate a field of vision that is best for your setup and matches what you see on the in-game camera.
If your eyes and the camera images in the game do not match, gameplay will be distorted, and speed and distance will be difficult to navigate, which will lead to hindered driving and less of a real-life experience.
When you are calculating your sim racing FOV, consider the size of the screen on which you are playing. When you have a larger screen, you will see more on it because more will fit. Also, you will have to consider how close you sit to the screen because the closer you sit to it, the less you will be able to take in from the horizontal POV.
It may seem overwhelming to determine the calculations needed to get optimal FOV for sim racing, but there is help. Online calculators make the specifics easier to figure out to have your best experience while racing in a virtual world.
The sim racing FOV calculator will help you calibrate the proper FOV for the optimal sim racing experience and is free to use.
Final Word
Optimizing your sim racing adventure is vital to your gaming experience. To get your best racing experience, set up your FOV to your particular equipment. Everyone, even playing the same game, will have a different FOV because of the size of screen they are playing on and the distance they are sitting from the monitor.
With the proper calculations, you get the most realistic play out of your virtual game. When you set your field of vision to the specifics of your gameplay setup, you are ensuring that you will be getting the most out of your virtual racing.
Last Updated on June 6, 2021