My experience with a more realistic FOV.

As if my life wasn't already being consumed by sim racing, I've had to go and make it a hell of a lot more awesome, thus ensuring I will be a anti-social recluse well into my thirties.

I've made some changes to my 'cockpit' and I'd like to share some experiences. To many of you this will be stuff you've already experienced before, but to the less hardcore among us I really recommend giving the following a go.

For the last 1-2 years my setup has consisted of the following. Office chair approximately 1.5 meters away from a 55inch monitor. Logitech g27 connected to a free standing wheel stand (that wobbles quite a bit). I made every effort to have a 1:1 FOV, so this resulted in a FOV around 35°. which is quite a zoomed in visually 'compressed' image.

When I first put my chair that close to the screen (basically as close as the wheel stand would allow), I thought it was amazing, and friends thought it was absurdly close. However I always wanted a more realistic seating position/view.

Recently I decided that although I was using a 1:1 FOV, in reality you don't view the world through a zoomed in image (you obviously have a very wide FOV) so my goal was to create the widest FOV possible with what I had.

The result is the attached image.

I took the base completely off the office chair and plonked the seat directly on the ground, and I put a small stand over the pedals and put the LCD about 50cm away from my face. The new 1:1 FOV is around 70°- 80°.

The difference has been MASSIVE.

You can feel the yaw of the car so much better, and controlling opposite lock is SO MUCH EASIER. Every complaint I have had in the past about over the limit handling, I pretty much take it back. I have never been able to drift the Cobra, and today without any practice, I was drifting it just fine. The ffb somehow made more sense and I knew exactly where the front tyres had to be pointed.

Sense of speed and also judging the braking zones is hugely improved. Depth perception is improved because everything just appears more three dimensional with a wider angle perspective.

I am still in the honeymoon phase of these new changes but I really cant overstate how much better it is. Even my girlfriend was feeling the car more, driving lap after lap without any offs.

My recommendation to anyone (if possible):

Try to get the highest angle FOV as you can (while still maintaining a 1:1 ratio). This will involve getting your monitor as close to your face as you can (and/or using a bigger monitor). Ideally you want your feet past the monitor, and the monitor as close to the wheel as possible. Graphics look worse but it's not too bad and it's worth it. Find a proper seat and not an office chair that moves around - ideally try to recreate a realistic seating position. Secure your wheel so it doesn't move around on a flimsy stand. Then muck around with FOV, in game seating position, real life wheel position, real life seat, until you get it looking and feeling as real as possible.

My next step will be setting up rear speakers.

I achieved this all with $0 spent, and the improvement has been substantial. My lounge room looks a bit odd, but it's the price I am willing to pay for immersion!

 

Yes, having realistic fov is important for sensing the rotation of the car. With unrealisticly large fov the movement of the landscape (when car starts rotating) gets diminished and makes drifts much harder to detect.
Edit: By realistic fov i mean that 1:1 fov. Not 180 horizontal fov.

 

Never understood those people who try to squeeze out a "realistic FOV" on a 27" or on 3x 24" screens!
That won´t happen. They just cut theire experience to a tiny fraction of what they could see.
For my liking your virtual seat position (in car) is still too close. I like to see more and have a better sense of speed.
Also makes it easyer to see apex and other important parts of the track when getting closer.

 

Try VR that is the closest to real life INMO

 

Are you sure you don't have something wrong with your fov calculation? I have 3 x 24" screens and the fov the rf2 calculator gives me, feels right and i see more than enough.

 

Would love to try VR, but currently I don't have the means.

 

is that a 4k tv?

 

Yeah, I'm always amazed at how much easier it is to judge things in VR; snaking the car through tight chicanes is so much easier in VR than when using triples and the FOV just works and makes sense (Limited HMD FOV aside of course).

 

In the past i was racing with a 55" 3D-TV. The distance to the TV was rather high (like 1-2m) because I mounted the wheel to a table.
Because of that I was racing with a much higher FOV than calculated. I almost only raced at Nordschleife (this track is so fascinating). But then I drove the real Nordschleife with my real car and I thought this looks so much different to what I see in rF2. So I calculated what would be the correct FOV in rF2 and then what I've seen in real life was the same I've seen in rF2. From that point I always raced with correct FOV in rF2 because only correct FOV is realistic!!

Then, some time later I switched to Oculus CV1 VR and I can tell you racing in VR looks absolutely the same as racing in real life, it is awesome!!! Now me and alot of friends do VR Nordschleife racing sessions (AC at the moment and we wait so impatiently for rF2 VR support ) before we go to drive at the real Nordschleife. Because of that we know the Nordschleife so well and precise like we drove there for 100 times in real.

 

Depends on whether you use virtual mirrors or real mirrors. For instance, 24" screens just aren't going to see the real stockcar mirror unless you have them positioned between your eyes and the steering wheel at correct FOV. You also miss out on the real tachometer placed down low in the Cobra or some of the TV rearview mirrors placed down low.

27" screens are borderline... and don't forget that the 34"-35" widescreens are basically the same as 27" screens for vertical view. 40" and higher is where FOV works nicely (and then you have major tradeoffs of resolution vs. affordability vs. performance, especially with triples!).

 

Well that's true. didn't come to my mind since i haven't been using mirrors and i use hud.

 

I, too, recently tweaked my setup and FOV settings. I ended up going the "zoomed in" route as I only have a 24" monitor, but wanted to get a sense of the relative change. While I like the overall presentation better due to visual distances being more accurate, I can agree about yaw recovery being a bit tricky. Next time I setup my rig, I'll try expanding the FOV a 3-4 degrees and going from there. While it'll be *slightly* wider than 1:1, it should provide enough of a compromise to regain some of the sense of yaw.

Current setup with the 24" monitor is 28" from my face. All of the calculators give me a 27deg vertical FOV recommendation. I'll expand it out to 30deg and see how that feels.

 

I think the sense of yaw should be better with 1:1 FOV than with wider FOV, but maybe in the case of single 24" screen the 1:1 FOV is too narrow and makes it more difficult to make sense of the yaw movement.

 

In the config files I have put my dimensions in and the resultant image seems ok,but then in the ingame settings it has a manual input fov option,should I change that the correct fov too.
I have no idea what that is because all the calculators are for like iracing,not sure which one now,but I know rf2 uses a different fov,is it horizontal or vertical.
Anyone have a link for the correct fov calculator

 

Do you have triples or single screen. With triples the fov adjustment does nothing when i adjust it.

 

Awesome!
The FOV/POV adjustment is something I have only recently been made aware of and I agree, it makes a WORLD of difference in your driving. I am constantly tweaking this lately.

 

@patchedupdemon rFactor uses vertical FOV.

 

Nope just regular old 1080x1920

I see what you are saying here, with a more zoomed in FOV, you can 'detect' yaw changes quite easily because the virtual camera moves a great deal relative to the surrounding. The more zoomed in a camera/lens is, the more it amplifies any movement. For example holding a wide angle lens steady with a hand held camera is far easier than with a zoom lens.
But i find the problem is, your view point feels like its far forward of the axis of rotation. Like you are sitting right on the front bumper of the car. You can detect a lot of rotation, but I find it harder to control.

I found that when I got right up close to the screen and used a much wider FOV, I felt like I was seated closer to the axis of rotation, more like I was actually inside a car. The best part is the feeling that I could almost reach out the window and touch the fast moving road down below. Things feel so much faster/more awesome. I guess VR would amplify all of this, but atm this is a cheaper alternative.

 

Triple 24" sitting about 730mm away

 

Yes, with small screen or sitting too far away from the screen, using 1:1 FOV feels like watching through binoculars or very small window. But when using big screen or going very close to the screen, using 1:1 FOV becomes possible. To keep the 1:1 fov as you move closer to screen you need to widen the fov, like you did.