Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
meansthattheTVoccupies40°oftheviewer'sfieldofview.
Figure8.4(a)
demon-
strates a television at the THX recommended distance.
Figure 8.4
50” HDTV with a 40° viewing angle (a), and PC monitor with a 90°
viewing angle (b).
In this configuration, as long as the field of view for the game is greater than or
equal to 40°, all but the most sensitive of players should not have an issue viewing
it. This is one of the reasons why for console games it is very common to have a
field of view of approximately 65°.
But what happens if this game is instead played on a PC? In a PC configuration,
the player is typically going to have the monitor occupying a much greater per-
centage of their binocular field of view. It is very common to have a configuration
where the viewing angle of the monitor is 90° or more, as shown in
Figure 8.4(b)
.
If the game has a 65° field of view in a setup where the viewing angle is 90°, the
discrepancy between the virtual field of view and the viewing angle may cause
some players discomfort. That's because the game world appears to be more nar-
row than what the brain is expecting to be visible in a 90° view. Because of this
issue,itisagoodpractice forPCgamestoallowtheplayertoselect theirpreferred
field of view in the settings.
